


Underground

by pterawaters



Series: Mr. Sandman [14]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: All the Byers Have Powers, Bisexuality, Canon-Typical Violence, Established Relationship, F/F, Family Drama, Found Family, Jonathan Byers Has Powers, Monster Hunting Family, Multi, Polyamory, Science Fiction, Sex Toys, Steve Harrington's Nail Bat, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-18
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-27 18:48:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 61,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22790494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pterawaters/pseuds/pterawaters
Summary: As Valentine's Day approaches, Jonathan has to deal with seeing his father again, and with the return of a monstrous adversary. Nancy confronts certain aspects of her identity, while Steve reunites with an old friend.
Relationships: Jonathan Byers/Nancy Wheeler, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington, Jonathan Byers/Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley & Nancy Wheeler, Robin Buckley/Original Female Character(s), Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler
Series: Mr. Sandman [14]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1527764
Comments: 79
Kudos: 99





	1. The Shop

**Author's Note:**

> If you've been reading this series from the beginning, welcome back!
> 
> If you're new to this series, I would definitely recommend reading from at least [Sleepwalker](https://archiveofourown.org/works/21583837) on to be able to enjoy this story.

**_ January 1988 _ **

When Nancy got back to the apartment, Robin was there, sitting at the table and drinking a cup of coffee. “Hey,” Nancy said, setting her bag down next to the couch and hanging up her coat. “Charlie go to work already?”

“Yeah,” Robin said, giving Nancy a smile that didn’t look very happy.

Shit.

Nancy sat down across from Robin. “Are you okay? Did something happen?”

Her brow furrowing, Robin asked, “What? No?”

“Then what’s with the face?” Nancy picked up the potholder that was sitting on the table, just for something to fiddle with.

Robin licked her lips and said, “I need your help with something.”

"With what?"

"Valentine's Day is coming up in a couple weeks," Robin said in a rush, scrunching up her face like she was in pain. "And it's also Charlie's birthday."

Chuckling, Nancy said, "I know. I was there."

"Right, yeah," Robin said, giving a nervous laugh. "Anyway, I want to get her something that I think she would like, I just… don't want to go to the store by myself."

Nancy frowned at Robin. "Robin, you are literally an FBI agent. If–"

"In training," Robin corrected.

Nancy rolled her eyes. " _In training_. If you can't go into a department store by yourself, you've got bigger problems than–"

"It's not a department store." Robin drummed her fingers on the table and then leaned closer, saying in a whisper, "It's a sex shop."

Nancy felt her face get bright red. She cried, "You want _me_ to go shopping with _you_ in a _sex shop_ , so you can buy a present for my _daughter_?"

"Well, it sounds messed up when you say it like that!" 

"That's because it _is_ messed up," Nancy told her, watching Robin's face fall.

Robin put her head down on the table, wailing, "I knoooow!"

With a sigh, Nancy asked, "You really need someone to go with you?"

Robin nodded against the table. "My ex had the...the thing I want to get for Charlie. But she bought it herself. I've never been to one before."

"And you can't get, I don't know, _Steve_ to go with you?" Nancy suggested. "I feel like he'd be more comfortable with this."

"Yeah, but like _too_ comfortable. He'd be making sex jokes the whole time. I just…" Robin reached across the table, putting her hands over Nancy's. "Pleeeeease?"

Nancy sighed, unable to stand the pleading look on Robin's face. "Fine! Fine. When do you want to go?"

"Maybe Friday?" Robin suggested. "When Charlie and Steve are both working?"

"Okay," Nancy said with a nod. "Okay, fine. We'll go. But you'll owe me one."

"Sure," Robin said with a bright grin. "Yeah, no problem!"

~*~

Jonathan was most of the way home, his headphones on and his walkman playing, when he noticed someone noticing him. For the last year (well, two years for him after losing most of a year in 1965) he had always been on the lookout for it, terrified of being caught unaware again. He tore his headphones off and put his back to the building beside him, searching the street for the flicker he'd felt.

Oh, there it was. Coming from the Camaro down the block. As he honed in on the mind he'd noticed, Jonathan realized he was familiar.

Lonnie.

Jonathan sighed and stomped down the sidewalk, stopping at the Camaro and crossing his arms. Lonnie got out of the car and rounded it, saying, "Hey."

"What do you want?" Jonathan asked him. "How did you even find me?"

"I've been looking for you and your brother for awhile now," Lonnie said. "I managed to hear it through the old Hawkins grapevine that you were going to school here. Got your address from the university."

"They shouldn't have given it to you," Jonathan told him, thinking he'd have to have a talk with whatever administrator had ignored his directive to remain unlisted. 

"Well, what am I supposed to do?" Lonnie asked. "Your mother just took you and ran off to god knows where. She didn't even notify me you'd moved."

Jonathan scoffed. "Last time you came around, you were trying to profit off Will's death. You didn't even come back when we found him! He was in the hospital for a week!"

"Come on, that was almost five years ago! How long is your mother going to make you hold this–this _grudge_ against me?" Lonnie took a step toward Jonathan, but Jonathan stepped back, keeping an even distance between them. Getting a read on Lonnie was easy enough, and Jonathan could tell that he was being two-faced for some reason. Like always. He probably wanted something from Jonathan. Wanted to use him for something.

"You're right, Lonnie. It's been _almost five years_. I haven't heard from you once in all that time." He shook his head. "I don't owe you shit. Just forget you ever knew me and go away." Jonathan walked around him and headed for his building.

"Okay, okay," Lonnie said, following Jonathan toward the building. “Just tell me how to get in contact with your brother.”

“Fuck you!” Jonathan turned to face him again, and he had to dodge Lonnie's attempt to grab his arm. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t touch me.”

Lonnie started to laugh, but then he must have seen something in Jonathan’s expression, because he suddenly got really nervous. “Look,” he said, pulling his hand back. “I know it’s too late for me with you. But I was hoping it might be different with your brother.”

Lonnie was _lying_. 

_ Hey, are you okay _ ? Jonathan heard Charlie ask him, and he could tell that she was on the steps to their building, just a few yards behind him. Before he could tell her that yes, he was fine, Charlie jogged over, closing the distance.

“Who’s this prick?” she asked, and Jonathan had to do his best not to smile at her choice of words.

“Unfortunately, my father,” Jonathan told her. “Lonnie, this is Charlie.”

Lonnie looked her up and down and then whistled, evoking a sudden surge of nausea in Jonathan. “Wow, college boy _and_ dating a hottie. You’re doing well for yourself, Jonny.”

“Ugh,” Jonathan said, putting his body between Lonnie and Charlie. “Don’t be an asshole. We’re not dating. She’s…” Jonathan suddenly realized Lonnie knew too much about his family for their usual lie to work. He switched gears mid-sentence, finishing by saying, “N-nancy’s cousin.”

“Nancy? Wheeler? That little girl you were hanging out with at the funeral?” Lonnie asked. “She’s your girlfriend now?”

“Fiancé,” Jonathan replied.

Lonnie nodded. “Even better. Her family’s well-off, aren’t they? You know, I was always worried you’d turn out to be some sort of fairy. I thought I might have been right when I got a look at your neighborhood. I’m glad I was wrong.” He grinned, and Jonathan felt sick again. “Gonna invite me to the wedding?”

The thought of Lonnie attending his wedding made Jonathan feel physically ill. “Why the hell would I do that? So you can ruin yet another thing in my life?”

“Ouch, okay,” he said, backing off. Then he took a card out of his pocket. “Here. Just give my number to your brother. Let him have the choice whether he wants to reconnect or not.”

Jonathan snatched the card out of Lonnie’s hand. “Fine. But don’t be too surprised if he doesn’t call. He doesn’t need another father figure in his life.”

Confused, Lonnie furrowed his brows. “What, _you_? A big brother isn’t a dad, Jonny.”

Jonathan shook his head and sneered at Lonnie. “Mom remarried.”

“It was a beautiful ceremony,” Charlie added. “Very classy.”

Lonnie frowned at Charlie for a moment before turning to Jonathan. “Who the hell did she marry? Not Hopper, right?”

“Hopper died in the Starcourt fire,” Jonathan told him. “All that matters is that she’s happy without you. We’re _all_ happy without you. So...fuck...off.”

Lonnie gave Jonathan a long, pissed-off look. Jonathan met his eyes, second-for-second, not looking away. It was Lonnie who flinched first. “Okay, alright. I’m leaving. Have a nice life.”

Something dark flitted through Lonnie’s mind and Jonathan found himself reaching back. He grabbed Charlie’s hand, feeling it as he gained easy access to the extra power she had. It made him feel less vulnerable as they watched Lonnie get in his car and drive away. 

Once he was gone, Charlie wrapped her arms around Jonathan and hugged him. “I can’t believe we’re related to that asshole.”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” Jonathan said with a sigh. He put Lonnie’s card in his jacket pocket. “Let’s get inside. It’s cold.”

~*~

“Hey, can I buy you lunch today?” Stef asked as she and Steve finished their classwork at the library. “I was hoping to get your advice on something.”

“Sure,” Steve said with a shrug. “I don’t have anywhere specific to be until Hagel’s lecture at three.” Putting the last of his books into his bag, he took his glasses off and put them in their case, throwing that into his bag as well. “Is it something having to do with class, or…?”

“It’s about this guy I’m seeing,” she told him as they left the library. 

Intrigued, Steve asked, “Which guy? Do I know him?”

“Probably not,” she said. “He’s in my lit class, but he’s a poli sci major. His name is Kyle.”

Trying to get a read on Stef, Steve asked her, “So, do we like Kyle? Or are we lukewarm on him?”

“We like him a lot,” Stef said. “But some of the stuff he says…” She sighed and shook her head. 

“Hey,” Steve said, stopping and putting his hands on her shoulders, getting Stef to look him in the eye. “You should be with someone who doesn’t make you have that tone in your voice.” 

Stef looked at Steve and said, “But he’s so hot!”

Steve laughed, letting Stef resume walking toward the campus cafe. “How hot are we talking here? Like Johnny Depp hot or Judd Nelson hot?”

“Rob Lowe hot,” Stef told him with a pout. “And he’s going out with _me_.”

Steve hummed thoughtfully in response. 

After they got their lunches and sat down, he asked, “So, what did he say that you didn’t like?”

“He’s just not very…” Stef shrugged. “Not very compassionate sometimes. About _certain_ people.”

“Ah.” Steve took a bite of his sandwich and chewed it. “You sleep with him yet?”

Stef shook her head, chewing her food too. “He’s taking me out on Saturday. I thought maybe afterward. If it goes well.”

“But if he talks shit about _certain_ people,” Steve told her, “I doubt he’s good in bed.”

Stef laughed. “Yeah? Remind me again how many different people you’ve slept with.”

“Just the two,” Steve admitted. “But what I’m trying to get at is that if he can’t empathize with _certain_ people – you gotta tell me what you mean by that – what’s saying he’ll empathize with _you_ in bed? I bet he’ll just be in it for himself.”

“Huh. That’s a good point,” she said, poking at her food with her fork. “He said some things about people, well, like _you_ , that I don’t agree with.”

“Uh-huh,” Steve said, finishing chewing. “Can I watch you dump him? Cause you know that’s what you’re going to have to do. Stef, you can’t date him. Come on!”

“People with different political views date all the time.” 

Steve’s stomach sank. Was this it? Was he going to have to lose his best college friend? Over some asshole boyfriend? “Stef…”

She sighed. “I know, I know. You’re right. I just…” loading some mashed potatoes onto her fork, she said, “You’re the only guy around here who doesn’t suck.”

Steve wanted so badly to make a blow job joke, but he held back. Now wasn’t the time. “What about that guy from Anderson’s class? He’s always looking over at you.”

“No, I’m pretty sure he’s looking at _you_ ,” Stef told him. 

Steve frowned as he tried to remember exactly where that guy had been looking during lecture. "Really?"

"Yeah," she said with a laugh. “Maybe I’ve got to stop hanging out with you all the time. You’re prettier than I am.”

Steve blushed a little at the compliment, but insisted, “No way! We’ve just got to find you someone nice. Maybe not quite as hot as Mr. Poli Sci, but we’re looking for _emotional_ quality here, Stef.”

She rolled her eyes. “You’re such a cheese ball.”

“Hey, maybe don’t insult the guy trying to be your wingman, huh?” Steve said, but he laughed and grinned at her as he chewed his next bite. 

Stef noticed someone over Steve’s shoulder then, gesturing for him to turn around. When he looked, he saw Jonathan coming toward them. “Hey! Wanna have lunch with us?”

“Not really,” he said, shoving his hands deep in his coat pockets. 

“What’s wrong?”

Giving Stef a polite smile, Jonathan asked, “Are you busy later?”

Shrugging, Steve told him, “Just lecture at three and then I’m headed to work. Why?”

“I need to yell at the admins about yesterday,” he said, and Steve understood. “I thought if we both went in, they’d actually take it seriously.”

“Yeah, okay,” Steve told him, wanting so badly to hug him and make him feel better. “I could finish eating real quick.”

“If that’s okay,” he said, giving Stef a questioning look as he sat down in the chair next to Steve’s. 

She asked, “What happened yesterday?”

“They gave my dad our address,” Jonathan told her. “Even though I told them we’re unlisted.”

“Is he…?” Stef looked over at Steve. “Less than compassionate?”

“I’ve never met him,” Steve told her before looking over at Jonathan. “But that’s what I hear.”

“He’s an asshole,” Jonathan told her. 

“Asshole dads,” Steve said to Stef as he motioned back and forth between Jonathan and himself. “One big thing we’ve got in common.”

“Yeah, you guys should take care of that with the admins,” Stef told them. 

Steve got his next bite chewed and swallowed before pointing at Stef. “You’ll break up with Kyle? It’s guys like that who become the next generation of asshole dads unless women who know better refuse to fuck ‘em.”

With a laugh, Stef nodded. “I’ll break up with him.” She turned to Jonathan. “Any eligible bachelors over in the art department?”

Making a face at her, Jonathan said, “I haven’t exactly been asking around.”

“Not up on the hot art department gossip? My Jonathan?” Steve gasped dramatically. “I never would have guessed!”

Jonathan laughed, shoving Steve’s shoulder.

“I keep telling him he needs to make friends,” Steve said, scooping the last bite of his lunch up onto his fork. “I know they’re all pretentious assholes. I mean, they let you in, didn’t they?” Jonathan gave Steve another admonishing shove. “But sometimes it pays to have friends.”

Jonathan leaned closer and murmured, “The last time I made good friends I ended up sleeping with both of them. I’m just … making you aware of my track record.”

Steve laughed as he finished chewing, shaking his head when Stef gave him a questioning look. “Private joke. I’ll see you at Hagel’s lecture?”

“Sure,” Stef said, leaning back in her chair as Steve and Jonathan stood up. “Good luck with the admin office.”

“Thanks,” he said, going over and giving her a little one-armed hug. “Good luck dumping Kyle. Seriously, let me know if you want me to be there for like moral support or whatever.”

“You just want to see a homophobe get his just desserts,” she replied quietly. 

“Hey, can you blame me?” Steve dumped his trash, gave his friend one last wave and left, Jonathan walking beside him. Once they got outside, Steve asked Jonathan, “How worried are you about Lonnie knowing where we live?”

“Not too worried,” Jonathan told him, knocking his elbow against Steve’s. “He’s an asshole, and I don’t know what he thinks he’s up to, but he’s mostly harmless. I’m more worried about the school giving our address to anyone who might have connections to the Execugen facility.”

“The school still has the family’s address too, don’t they?” Steve sighed. “I wonder if we can get them to erase it from their files. For sure we don’t want anyone going after them, either.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan agreed. “If the school needs a permanent address or something, maybe we can get Hop to take out a P.O Box.”

“Yeah, maybe." As they walked together, Steve brushed his knuckles against Jonathan's hand. It wasn't as good as holding his hand, but it was something, anyway.

~*~

“Okay,” Nancy said from the outside of the store as she looked at it. “Let’s make this quick. Just go in and get…” Nancy paused, looking over at Robin. “What are we getting, anyway?”

Covering her face, Robin said, “A strap-on dildo.”

Nancy had no idea how to respond. She stood there, trying to come up with something, her mouth moving without words, until Robin grabbed her wrist. 

“Come on.”

Robin pulled her inside, where it looked kind of like any other store, except every time Nancy managed to focus on one particular shelf or display, it was covered in things that made her blush and want to look away. There was a woman behind the counter next to the door, probably mid-30s with black hair up in a ponytail, who said, “IDs, please, ladies?”

“Um, right,” Robin said, taking her wallet out of her coat pocket and handing over her ID. Nancy dug hers out of her purse and handed it to the woman as well.

As she gave back the ID cards, she smiled and said, “Can I help you girls find anything?”

Nancy very pointedly looked over at Robin. This was her idea, and no way was Nancy letting her off the hook for this.

“Do you have any, um,” Robin said, fidgeting with the edge of the counter. “Any dildos – well, I’m sure you have those!” Nancy covered her mouth and tried not to laugh. “I mean, of the strap-on, uh, variety?”

The woman looked amused, but she didn’t laugh. “You’ll want that section of the store,” she said, pointing. “And please, don’t hesitate to ask questions.”

“Okay, thanks!” Robin said, her voice so high-pitched, it was almost a squeak. She hurried in the direction of the corner the saleswoman indicated, and Nancy followed her, not wanting to be left alone _here_. 

When Robin stopped, Nancy forced herself to look up at the display. "Wow. That's a lot of dicks."

Robin giggled. "Yeah, it is."

Nancy couldn't help but laugh too, covering her burning-red face. "Please, just pick something so we can get out of here!"

"But what if I go too fast and pick the wrong thing?" Robin asked her.

With a groan of frustration, Nancy forced herself to look at the display, and then the one beside it, and then the one on the other side. She picked up boxes and read them. She studied. Then she asked, "Why do you even want something like this?"

"I don't know…" Robin shrugged and sighed. "I mean, it was always kind of fun with my ex, and Charlie's only been with guys before, and…"

"Hey," Nancy said, turning to face Robin. “Charlie likes you because you’re _you_. Unless she’s actually said out loud that she misses…” Nancy couldn’t quite say it out loud, so she gestured to the display. “I don’t think you should worry about it.”

“Maybe...it’s more for _me_ than I let on earlier,” Robin said, picking at the hem of her coat sleeve. 

“Okay. That’s a different story,” Nancy said, looking back at the display again. “It says these ones over here work with this harness thing.” She picked up said item, reading the packaging. “Adjustable, so it should fit.”

“Green or pink?” Robin asked, pointing at two of the dildos on the shelf.

“ _Smaller_ ,” Nancy answered honestly, laughing. “Are you kidding me? That’s huge!”

“It is?” Robin asked, picking the green one up off the shelf. “Oh, it’s a lot heavier than the one Cathy had!” She laughed and snorted, covering her mouth as she put the green one back. “Sorry, I have no frame of reference for how big…” She cracked up again.

“I’ve only ever seen two in person,” Nancy said, reaching for a blue dildo on one of the lower shelves, “but this is more like what I’m used to.” She handed it to Robin. 

“That is…” Robin said, taking the dildo and looking it over, “...more information than I needed, Nance.” She laughed. “How do they walk around with these in their pants all day?”

“Honestly, I don’t know,” Nancy told her, giggling. 

She picked up another one of the display dildos, looking at it and suddenly realizing that it would have saved her and Jonathan a lot of grief while they had been away from Steve. Then the thought of pushing this into him, getting him to make the noises he only did when Steve was fucking him, made Nancy shiver. Then she thought about getting Steve under her, all relaxed and pliant, and she shivered again.

She put the dildo back on the shelf, snatching her hand away. 

“What?” Robin asked her. “It’s not going to bite.”

“I…” Suddenly Nancy pictured herself using it like Robin would, on a girl. She didn't picture anyone she knew, and certainly not Robin, but a generic girl. Fucking her. Watching her breasts move with the motion of it. Kissing her. Making her bite her lip and moan.

“Let’s, um…” Nancy said to Robin, her neck and face feeling unbearably hot. “Let’s go. Can we go?”

“Yeah,” Robin said, taking the harness and a box containing one of the smaller blue dildos. “Let’s go.”

When they got up to the counter, the saleswoman asked, “Did you find everything you were looking for?”

Nancy looked to Robin, who said, “Yeah, yeah. Just this. Please.”

“Do you want some toy-safe lube to go with this, or do you ladies already have some at home?” she asked, a perfectly pleasant, polite smile on her face. 

Nancy wanted to protest that she _wasn’t_ Robin’s girlfriend, but what good would that do? She bit her lips and looked to Robin again.

“Um, yeah. We– I mean, _I_ should get some of that too,” Robin said. “Thanks.”

The woman took a tube off one of the displays on the counter and added it to the plain brown paper bag with the other items. Robin paid and Nancy led the way out of the store, walking quickly back to Robin’s car. 

When Robin caught up, she asked, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Nancy said with a nervous laugh. “Just, um…” She looked back at the store, itching to get her hands back on that toy. “Just having a little sexuality crisis. No big deal.”

“What?” Robin cried, lifting her hands up in surprise. Her eyes landed on the bag in her left hand, which she quickly stashed in the trunk of her car before asking Nancy, “What do you mean?”

It was freezing, the air so cold it bit at Nancy’s lungs, so she said, “Let’s get in the car first.”

“Sure.”

Robin unlocked the car doors and got in the driver’s seat. Once Nancy closed her door, she said, “I… I think I might like girls. Maybe.”

“Noooo,” Robin groaned, putting her head down against the steering wheel. “Do you know how much Steve is going to kill me when he finds out I turned you gay? Oh my god, and Jonathan too. I’m a dead woman! He’s gonna melt my brain!”

“I’m not...” Nancy couldn’t help but laugh at Robin’s misinterpretation of what she’d been trying to say. “I meant, I think I might be bi.”

“Oh,” Robin said, looking out the windshield. 

Nancy told her, “I’m still very much attracted to my fiancés, so don’t worry. They won’t kill you.”

Robin let out a relieved sigh. “Okay, good. But… bi, huh?”

“I just don’t get how I wouldn’t have noticed before now,” Nancy said, trying to think back over everything. “It’s not like I didn’t know it existed. The two people I’m closest to are both bi. I just assumed…”

“You assumed since you liked boys, that was the end of it?” Robin asked.

Nancy nodded. 

Starting the engine, Robin said, “For a couple years during middle school and high school…” She pulled out of the parking spot and started driving home. “I thought I was too picky. None of the boys in school were good enough for me to consider going out with.” She laughed. “See? I assumed I was straight, too. Until it became very obvious that I wasn’t.”

Nancy nodded, thinking through things again. “I was _so_ boy crazy as a teenager, though,” Nancy told Robin. “I couldn’t stop thinking about them. I mean…” she laughed a little. “I ended up with _two_ of them.”

“So, what makes you think you like girls, too?” Robin asked.

Looking down at her hands, Nancy admitted, “Because, if things were different? If I didn’t have Steve and Jonathan? I could really see myself being with a girl. Having sex, anyway.” 

Robin drove silently for a moment before asking, “Any girl in particular?”

“No,” Nancy said, shaking her head. “Not that I can…” An image coalesced in her mind.

“Oh, you thought of someone, didn’t you?” Robin asked, stopping at a red light and looking over at Nancy with a grin. “Who is it?”

“There’s this girl on the paper with me,” Nancy admitted. “Valerie. She always smells _so good_. Like, her shampoo or something.”

Robin laughed. “Oh, yeah. I know that feeling. There’s also the feeling where you can’t stop staring at her face, like you’re trying to memorize it.”

“That’s a _thing_?” Nancy asked. “I always thought I was trying to figure out how they did their make up.”

“Well, now I’m glad I made you come with me today,” Robin said. “You’ve learned something new about yourself.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Nancy said. “It’s not like it’s a big deal. It doesn’t change anything.”

Robin made an argumentative sort of noise.

“What?”

“I think Charlie might want to know,” Robin said. “Like yeah, she knows about Jonathan and Steve, but they’re both guys. If she knows about you too, it might help with the…” Robin sighed. “She still acts really ashamed sometimes. She likes to think she’s a rebel and she doesn’t care what other people think, but…”

“Yeah,” Nancy replied. “Yeah, I can see that. Just…I want to tell the boys first. They need to hear it from me before Charlie tries to talk to them about it or something.”

“No problem,” Robin said. “I’m good at keeping secrets.”

“Thanks.”

Robin dropped Nancy off in front of her building with a farewell, and when Nancy got up to the apartment, Jonathan was already there. He was sprawled out on the couch, paging through photos, holding each one up and frowning as he inspected it.

“Hey,” he said without looking over. “Why are you…?” He put the stack of photos down and looked at Nancy. Raising an eyebrow, he asked, “Really?”

She nodded. “Like, really bad. If you don’t mind the interruption.”

“I don’t mind,” he said, letting Nancy give him a hand up to his feet. As he kissed her, Nancy led Jonathan to their bedroom, walking backward and pulling him with her. Jonathan laughed a little and asked, “What’s gotten into you?”

He closed the door behind them and then let Nancy take his shirt off. “Robin made me go with her to a sex shop,” Nancy explained. “To buy a Valentine’s Day present.”

“And that’s why you’re so…?” he asked, crouching down to unlace and take Nancy’s boots off her feet.

“Yeah,” she told him, taking off her sweater and the tank top she had on underneath. “It gave me _ideas_.”

Jonathan pulled off her other boot and then helped pull down her jeans. “What sorts of ideas?”

“I…” Nancy said, collapsing back on the bed and looking at the ceiling. “I’m not sure I can actually say it out loud.” She gave a nervous laugh. “Maybe I’ll just have to bring you there and show you.”

“Here, how’s this?” Jonathan said, dropping his pants before laying down next to her. “Just…” He said, gesturing up. “Just pretend I’m not here. Tell the ceiling what you want.”

Nancy gave an amused snort. “Okay. Just tell the ceiling. Yeah, sure.” Taking a deep breath, Nancy let it out. Then she said, “I can tell how much you like it when Steve fucks you.”

Jonathan didn’t say anything, so Nancy looked over at him expectantly. “Oh,” he said with a smirk. “I thought we were pretending I’m not here.”

Nancy pushed his shoulder and said, “Jonathan! Come on!”

He laughed, then looked up at the ceiling again. “I do like it. It’s not the only thing I like, by any means.”

“I didn’t say that,” Nancy assured him. She found his hand with hers, lacing their fingers together. “But I can tell how much you like it. And maybe you just want it to be a you-and-Steve thing. But I just…” Nancy sighed. “That whole time we were in Cedarville, and I couldn’t give you what you needed? I felt bad about that. Inadequate.”

“Nancy,” Jonathan said, letting go of her hand and turning to face her. “I didn’t mean to make you feel that way.” He propped himself up on one elbow and used the other hand to brush her hair back behind her ear. “Why didn’t I know about this before?”

“There were a lot of things I was unhappy about back then,” Nancy said, shifting so she could kiss his arm and look up at him. “It got lost amid everything else. And…” Nancy sighed, reaching up and putting her hand on his cheek, stroking his cheekbone and making him smile. “I wasn’t doing a good job of communicating like I should have been.”

“I wasn’t either,” he admitted, shifting to kiss her. After a few slow kisses, Jonathan asked, “What does this have to do with the sex shop you went to?”

“I found something there that I wish I would have had back then,” she told him.

“Something–” Jonathan took a sharp breath. “Ohhh.”

“Is that…” Nancy tried to ask, not really able to look at his face. “Maybe something you would want to try? For me?”

He was quiet for a few seconds, before he nodded, saying, “Yeah. Yeah okay. We could give it a try, anyway.”

A slow smile spread across Nancy’s face. “Really?”

“Yeah.”

With a little laugh, Nancy said, “Well, now I’m regretting not buying it when I was there today.”

Jonathan laughed, putting himself more on top of Nancy and kissing her. She kissed him back, again reminded how bothered and needy she still felt. After a few kisses, Jonathan asked, “Is it just with me? Or would you want to do this with Steve, too?”

“Oh, Steve too,” Nancy told him. “If he wants to.”

Jonathan gave a little groan and shifted closer, his cock hard against her hip “I’d like to see that.”

“Yeah?” Nancy took Jonathan’s hand and moved it between her legs before kissing him hard. Her lips still brushing against his, Nancy asked, “You want to see me fuck our man? Make him come with my…” Nancy laughed and shook her head, still having trouble saying the words. 

Jonathan laughed too, kissing her, his fingers slipping through her wet folds. “You don’t have to be able to say it to do it,” he said, stroking her clit. 

Nancy moaned. “Oh, that’s good.”

“What do you want to do tonight?” he asked, kissing under Nancy’s jaw, then down her neck.

Nancy got her hands on him, touching his chest, his shoulders, his neck. Kissing Jonathan again, she pulled him as close as she could get him. “I need you to fuck me,” she told Jonathan. “I need you so much, Jonathan, please!”

He groaned against her mouth. “Turn over, sweetheart. I wanna…”

“Yeah, yes,” Nancy said, turning over and letting Jonathan pull her hips up until she was on her knees.

He sank into her, no resistance, before setting a fast pace. It felt amazing, and just what she needed. Every thrust got Nancy closer to where she wanted to be. Then she had a thought. 

She wasn’t facing Jonathan, so it was easier to ask him, “Is this how you want me to do you?”

“Oh, shit,” Jonathan cried, his rhythm faltering. “God damn it, Nancy!” He pressed in tight and came, breathing hard.

Nancy couldn’t help but giggle. By the time he collapsed onto the bed next to her, Jonathan was laughing too. Nancy kissed his smile. “You know, you don’t usually curse me out when I make you come.”

He laughed again, pulling her closer. “I was trying to make it good for you.”

She hummed in acknowledgement and kissed him again. “I’m confident you’ll think of something else you can do.”

“Thank you for the vote of confidence,” he replied, a chuckle still in his voice. “I’ll see if I can live up to expectations.”


	2. The Voice

Jonathan hadn’t been asleep long when something startled him awake. He tensed up, and Nancy shifted a little, her head still on his shoulder, her arm across his chest. At first, he thought it was Steve and Charlie coming home from their shared Friday night shift at La Grâce. A glance at the clock showed it was only just after ten, not late enough for them to be home yet. Did he hear someone trying to break in?

Jonathan listened in the dark for a moment, searching around for any unfamiliar minds. All he felt were the neighbors, each of whom he recognized. No one else was close enough to be in the apartment with him and Nancy. Distantly he could tell Charlie and Steve were both fine. If he listened harder, he could tell the rest of his family was fine, too.

Maybe it had just been a dream. A nightmare. He hadn't had one for awhile, so maybe his brain just decided it was time. 

Sighing, Jonathan kissed Nancy's forehead and hugged her closer before trying to fall back asleep.

_Help! Someone help me!_

Jonathan was so startled that he involuntarily sat up, dumping Nancy off his chest. She cried out and mumbled, "What the hell?"

Shushing her, Jonathan closed his eyes and cast his senses out, trying to find someone scared enough to have called out like that. Their fear was so agonizingly bright, it wasn't hard to find them. The sickening terror made Jonathan's blood feel ice-cold, his heart beating wildly, his fists clenching.

_Help!_

"Jesus," he breathed out, wiping a trickle of blood from under his nose. "Someone needs help." He got out of bed, reaching for the nearest items of clothing he could find. 

"Who?" Nancy asked, turning on the bedside lamp. "One of ours?"

"No," Jonathan said, pulling on one of Steve's sweaters, inside out. "I don't know who it is, but I can _hear_ them. The same way I heard Jenny at the lab."

Nancy gave him a wide-eyed look before jumping out of bed as well. Jonathan left the bedroom and got his feet into his boots and tied them quickly before pulling his coat on. Nancy was two steps behind him as Jonathan shoved his keys into his coat pocket and left the apartment. 

It was Friday night, so there was a fair amount of foot traffic out on the sidewalk, despite the freezing-cold weather. Jonathan followed the terrified feeling to the right, down the busy sidewalk and deeper into Boystown. When Nancy got held up by a group of people heading out of a bar, Jonathan waited for her, holding his hand back until she grabbed it. They ran together, Jonathan leading the way, turning down a side street.

"We're getting close," he told Nancy. "Do you see anything?"

"Like what?" she asked.

_Are you okay?_ Jonathan thought in the direction of the mind he was trying to find. _I'm coming for you. Hang on!_

"I don't know," he told Nancy. "Something terrifying."

"Right."

The fear grew so big and so overwhelming that Jonathan winced in pain. Still, he reached out, asking, _Can you hear me?_

The other person cried out, _Yes! Help me! Please! Oh, God!_

The terror spiked, and then it was gone.

"Oh, shit," Jonathan said, turning another corner and searching around as best he could. "Shit, I lost them."

Not nearly as out of breath as Jonathan, Nancy asked, "What do you mean? Lost them?"

No longer sure what direction to go in, Jonathan stopped, looking around for something amiss. Something wrong. " _Lost_ them," Jonathan repeated, catching his breath. "I think something really bad happened."

"Killed?"

Jonathan nodded. "Or unconscious. Maybe if I try harder…" He put his hands in Nancy's, saying, "Keep a look out for me?"

"Yeah, yeah, of course," she said, keeping her hold on one of his hands as she turned around, scanning the dark city streets.

Jonathan closed his eyes and searched for something, _anything_ like the mind he'd been in contact with. He got a vague questioning nudge from Charlie, so he sent her a quick, _Don't know yet._

And then he felt it. 

Muddy-slick, cold-sharp, malignant, _evil_.

_Oh, shit. Shit! It couldn't be? Could it?_

"Jonathan," Nancy hissed in his ear, making him open his eyes. "You're hyperventilating! What is it?"

"D-demo–" he tried to say, having to swallow the nervous spit flooding his mouth and take a deep breath before he could continue. "Demogorgon. C-close."

"What?" she asked, turning and putting her back to him, looking around, like _she_ was going to protect _him_ from it. "Where?"

"I don't know," he said, hanging onto her shoulder when he closed his eyes again.

The demogorgon was somewhere to the left, and its _need_ for something was momentarily sated. It was… If it wasn't feeding, it was going to be soon.

"We're too late," Jonathan told Nancy, pulling her closer to him. 

The demogorgon feeling faded as it moved away quickly – more quickly than he would have thought possible. Jonathan was left shivering on the dark sidewalk, clinging to Nancy, the tips of his ears and nose starting to freeze in the cold night air. 

"It's gone," he told her. "They both are."

"What the fuck is going on?" she asked.

Truthfully, he replied, "I don't know. But it's not good."

~*~

While Steve and Charlie were on the platform, waiting for the 10:35 train that would take them home, she reached out and grabbed his arm, saying, “Something’s wrong.”

“What? Here?” he asked, looking around at the others on the platform with them. Friday nights always had a lot more people around than when he worked Tuesdays and Thursdays. Still, nothing seemed out of the ordinary. The guy with the Bears hat was even here, waiting nearby like usual.

Charlie said, “No. With Jonathan. He says he doesn’t know what it is yet.”

Steve gave a frustrated huff. “What are we supposed to do with that?”

“Think we can get a cab home faster?”

Looking down the track, Steve saw the train in the distance. “It’s almost here. By the time we’d be able to flag down a cab, we could be halfway home.”

Charlie sighed. “Yeah, fuck. You’re right.” She fidgeted, nervous.

Putting his arms around her, Steve held Charlie and told her, “I’m worried too. I try to remind myself that they’re badasses. They can protect themselves.”

Charlie nodded. After they got on the train and found seats, she said, “Jonathan told me about the hospital. About what he had to do.”

“It was...bad,” Steve said, lamely. “He was so sick afterward. For weeks.”

Instead of replying, Charlie nodded and went tensely silent. They were almost to their stop when she told Steve, “He says it’s gone, but to keep our heads up on the walk home.”

“Does he say _what_ we should be on the lookout for?” Steve asked her, his leg bouncing nervously. 

Charlie shook her head. “No.”

“Shit. I wonder why not.”

After getting off the train, they practically jogged the six blocks over to their apartment. Everything seemed fine. Normal. Except Steve realized how _abnormal_ things could turn in an instant. 

He was relieved to find both Nancy and Jonathan in the apartment when he and Charlie arrived. They were sitting on the couch huddled together, drinking something out of mugs, and looking rattled and moderately disheveled. Jonathan’s sweater was on inside-out, and Nancy’s hair was kind of bunched up on one side. Steve crouched on the floor in front of them, asking, “What happened?”

Nancy looked at Jonathan, who licked his lips and said, “S-someone needed help. But…" he looked back over at Nancy. "We didn’t get there in time.”

“Who?” Steve asked, watching out of the corner of his eye as Charlie sat on the other end of the couch from them. 

“I don’t know,” Jonathan said, shaking his head. He took another sip from his mug before handing it to Steve. Noting it was filled with hot cocoa, Steve set it on the coffee table beside him. Jonathan continued, saying, “But they were like me,” he met Charlie’s eyes, “like us. And it got them.”

“It?”

“I didn’t see it,” he insisted. “But it felt like…” He pressed his lips together and looked away.

“Like a demogorgon,” Nancy finished for him. 

“Shit,” Steve said, the hairs rising on the back of his head. “How is that possible? There haven’t been any gates to the Upside Down in, like, three years.”

“Except Will and El can still access it,” Nancy pointed out. “Do we know if their powers might have been involved somehow?”

“They would have told me,” Jonathan said, pushing his hand back through his hair. 

“Maybe.” Steve rearranged into a more comfortable position on the floor. “They’ve been working for Owens. Who knows what sort of shady shit he’s been having them do?”

“What if it was someone else?” Charlie asked. “You told me there’s assholes breeding more people like us. What if one of their experiments did it on accident? Like El?”

“Technically possible,” Nancy said. “Though we think Jenny’s the first one they ever made. She’s only seven. El was twelve when she…”

“But if a gate _was_ open, wouldn’t we be hearing about the Mind Flayer again?” Steve asked. “Check with Will. He could tell when it was back before.”

“I’m tired,” Jonathan admitted, rubbing at his face. “I’m gonna have to get in the bath before I can ask him.”

“I’ll run it for you,” Steve told him, getting up off the floor. He leaned close, cupping Jonathan’s face in his hands and kissing him. “It’ll be okay.”

“I hope so.”

Then Steve gave Nancy a caress of her hair and a kiss on the lips too. “I’m glad you guys are okay.”

Nancy smiled at him. “Me too.”

~*~

When Jonathan’s alarm went off, Nancy hugged him tighter and asked, “Did you sleep?”

“No,” he said with a deep sigh.

On Jonathan’s other side, Steve mumbled, “Should call in sick, babe.”

“I’ll get fired.” Jonathan took Nancy’s arm from over his chest and crawled out of bed. “You guys should get more sleep, though.”

Nancy shifted over into the now-empty space, pulling Steve's arm around her. She watched Jonathan gather his things and leave, listening as he went out the door and locked it behind him. 

“We should pick him up from work tonight,” Nancy said to Steve. “He’s going to be so tired.”

Steve hummed. “Yeah, okay.” Then he sighed. “Shit, I’m supposed to work tonight, too.”

“What if it comes back?” Nancy asked him, burying her face in Steve’s neck. “I don’t want you out of my sight after dark.”

“Will said the gate’s not open again.” Steve ran his fingers through Nancy’s hair. “Maybe it wasn’t actually a demogorgon Jonathan felt. It’s not like you saw it, right?”

“What else would it have been?” Nancy asked.

“Dunno,” Steve said with a little bit of a shiver. “Someone messing with him. Trying to draw him out of the house for some reason.”

God, that made way too much sense. “Shit. We are _so_ picking him up from work.”

“Hey,” Steve said, propping himself up on his elbow and looking down at Nancy. “Promise me you guys won’t go looking for it while I’m at work tonight.”

The look of resignation on Steve’s face broke Nancy’s heart. He looked like he already knew he wasn’t going to get Nancy to promise, but that he needed to try anyway. Nancy hated that she’d made him feel this way. 

“Baby,” she whispered, putting both her hands on Steve’s face, stroking his cheekbones with her thumbs. “I promise. We won’t go looking for this thing without you.”

"Wait, really?" Steve asked, furrowing his brow at her. "Just like that?"

Nancy pulled Steve's face down and kissed that furrow before saying, "I _can_ learn from my past mistakes. I don't want you to feel abandoned again. Like before."

Steve looked into Nancy's eyes for a long moment before his expression broke and he looked away. The breath he took was stilted and broken.

Softly, Nancy asked him, "Steve? What are you thinking?"

He flopped down onto the bed, facing away from Nancy. For a moment, Nancy thought he was going to shut her out, but then he turned and grabbed her arm, tugging until she was cuddled against his broad back. Steve sighed and wrapped his hand around hers, holding it close to his chest.

"Steve?"

"You guys weren't even gone two weeks," he said. "From my end, anyway. That was over six months ago, and I still…" He sniffled a little, so Nancy hugged him tighter, kissing the warm skin over his spine. "You guys were without me a lot longer than I was without you, and sometimes it feels like you handled it, like, a _million_ times better than I did. Than I have."

"I didn't," Nancy told him. When he scoffed, she insisted, "Really, I _didn't_. You just didn't get to see it. There was a whole month where I barely spoke to Jonathan."

"Shit, why? What did he do?"

"He let me walk all over him," Nancy said. "He was _perfect_ , and _nice_ , and he took care of me. He never let me goad him into a fight. It was like he was this empty shell, just waiting to be himself again. I couldn't… I don't know… fill him up, or whatever."

Steve snorted a laugh.

It took Nancy a second to figure out the joke. "I didn't mean like _that_ ," she cried, smiling against Steve's back. "What I'm _trying_ to say is that you only think I'm handling it better because you didn't get to see the first six months of me handling it really poorly. By the time we were able to come back, part of me had already accepted that I wasn't going to be able to come back to you at all."

He pulled her hand closer, kissing her fingers. "I'm glad you came back."

"Me too."

Nancy settled against Steve's back, pressing her forehead to the back of his neck and breathing him in. After a moment, she realized he was rubbing his thumb across the smooth underside of her engagement ring. She'd gotten it back from the jeweler's the week before, properly sized so she was no longer afraid of losing it by accident. 

Steve sighed again, his thumb going still. "I don't want you to ruin you."

"Ruin me?" Nancy asked him, frowning at his back. "How?"

"Make you change into someone you're not. Because I'm too…" He turned onto his back and faced her. "I'm too scared of losing you again."

"Oh," Nancy said, thinking this over. "But, can't I change because _I'm_ too scared of getting lost again?"

Steve opened his mouth like he was going to respond, but then he frowned instead. Eventually, he said, "Uh. Yeah, I guess. That's… huh."

Smiling, Nancy pulled him close enough to kiss. "I know how you can get when you're scared, Steve. But, can you maybe trust me to tell you when you're being out of line? When you're asking for too much?"

"I…" Then Steve nodded. "Yeah. Yeah, babe. I trust you." He smiled, and Nancy smiled back at him.

She kissed him again before settling back down against his shoulder. She thought she should try to get some sleep. It had to be safe here, right? In the apartment, in the home she shared with her boys? The sun was up and bright. Demogorgons never hunted during the day.

Still, she couldn't quite fall asleep. 

She looked at Steve's face in profile, and though he had his eyes closed, his mouth wasn't open and slack. His fingers on her hip were too present, not lax enough. He wasn't sleeping either. Thinking about everything that had happened the night before led to her thinking of everything that had happened before then. The sex shop, her realization, her talk with Jonathan… 

It had been _a lot_ , and Nancy knew she was still trying to get her head around most of it.

Sometimes talking it through helped. She rubbed her thumb through Steve's chest hair and spoke up. "Can I ask you a question?"

He kept his eyes closed, but he said, "Sure."

Nancy took a deep breath before asking, "Do you think, if it wasn't for Jonathan, would you have realized you were bi?"

"I…" He said, blinking his eyes open and looking up at the ceiling. "I don't know." He frowned and thought for another moment. "I mean, I definitely _was_ before we got together. I know that now. But at the time? I had no clue."

"Do you think you would have figured it out eventually?"

Steve shrugged. "Probably not," he looked over at her. "People don't exactly talk about what it feels like to have a crush on another guy."

Needing to know, Nancy asked, "What _does_ it feel like?" 

“Like…” Steve sighed. “Like you want to be his friend so desperately, it pisses you off.”

Surprised by the description, Nancy gave a little laugh. Then she thought again, and something occurred to her. “Is that why you haven’t made any guy friends here?”

“No, it’s a bunch of reasons,” he said, and he sounded distressed.

Wanting to make it better, Nancy ran her fingers up and down his arm as she asked, “Like what?”

“Like…” He sighed. “There’s not that many guys in my program at school. And like, not knowing whether it’s safe to talk about Jonathan with any of the people I meet. I mean, what if I slip up? When you’re a kid, people expect you to be obsessed with your best friend. But when you’re an adult…?”

“Baby,” Nancy sighed, scooting up so she could pet his hair and kiss his cheek. “Do you miss having guy friends?”

“Yeah,” he admitted. Then he looked over and told her, “I don’t regret choosing to be with you and Jonathan. You make me happier than I ever was before.”

Steve smiled, put his hand on Nancy’s face, and led her into a soft, slow kiss. 

Nancy smiled back and brushed her nose against his, making him laugh.

“What’s with all the questions, anyway?” Steve asked her. “Avoiding trying to get more sleep that much, huh?”

“No, I…” Nancy sighed and flopped back down onto the bed. “I realized something yesterday. About myself.” She looked over at Steve, meeting his eyes. “It doesn’t change _anything_ , okay? I promise, it doesn’t.”

“Okayyy,” Steve said slowly, and Nancy could feel him watching her after she turned to face the ceiling. “What is it?”

There was nothing else to do other than just blurt it out, was there? “I think I might be bi too.”

“Oh,” he said, still looking at her. Nancy felt her cheeks get hot under his scrutiny. “That makes a lot of sense, actually.”

“What?” Nancy asked, laughing a little and looking over at him. “Why does that make sense?”

“Just…” He scrunched his mouth up to the side, like maybe he was rethinking saying something to her. 

“Steve!” Nancy sat up, leaning over Steve and looking down at him. “Tell me!”

He let out a breath he’d been holding and scratched his eyebrow. “Sometimes you flirt to get what you want, Nance. And not just with guys.”

Nancy frowned at him. “I do?”

“Yeah,” he said, giving her a confused look. “You don’t do it on purpose?”

“I– I’m–” Nancy tried to say, more than a little tongue-tied. “I’m _charming_!”

Steve laughed, reaching up and tucking Nancy’s hair behind both ears. “You _are_ charming, babe. But you’re also a flirt. It’s one of the things I love about you.”

“But, I…?” She frowned at Steve. “Name one time I flirted with a girl to get what I wanted!”

“Uh, how about the first time you met Robin?” Steve said, smiling. “Talk about _weaponized_ flirting!” He whistled appreciatively.

“The first time…” Nancy tried to think back. “You mean at the ice cream shop? What did I do?”

“The sexy spoon licking in her direction?” He said, running his hand down her side and back up. “You gave Jonathan a boner.”

Nancy felt herself blush again as she remembered. “Oh, yeah.” She laughed. “I was just trying to get her to go away!”

“Right. You flirt to get what you want.” Steve said this like it was obvious.

“Wait,” Nancy said. “You do the same thing! Like with that waitress when we went out to dinner on Sunday. You joked with her and winked and everything!”

“Well, yeah,” Steve replied. “'Cause it works. We got our food way before the table next to us.”

Nancy laughed. “How does Jonathan put up with us?”

Steve grinned and said, “He knows it doesn’t mean anything.” 

Nancy laughed, supposing that was true. Looking around the room, she said, “I don’t think we’re going to get more sleep. Not for awhile, anyway.”

“Normal Saturday routine, then?” he asked her. “Gym and then pancakes?”

Nancy nodded. “Whatever that shit was that happened last night, I suppose getting back to normal is the best thing we can do.”

~*~

Jonathan was coming back from his lunch break when he noticed a familiar flicker from the shop's waiting room. Fuck, this was too much. He went into the room and stood in front of Lonnie, his arms crossed. 

“Oh, hey, kid,” Lonnie said, smiling up at him. “You look like shit.”

“You come here just to insult me? How did you even find me?”

Lonnie shrugged. “I just had a flat. Needed it fixed before I drive back to Indianapolis.”

_He's lying._

“Bullshit. You never let anyone else touch your cars.” Jonathan scoffed. Then he realized he couldn't have this conversation in front of the other customers. He angled his head toward the door that led to the back alley. Once Lonnie followed him, Jonathan said, "You'd drive a hundred miles on a spare before you have a place like this fix your tire."

Lonnie made a lazy circuit of the alley. "What's wrong with a place like this? _You_ work here."

"There's nothing _wrong_ with it," Jonathan insisted, hating the way he felt like he was on the defensive. "But that's not what you used to say."

Nodding, Lonnie smirked. "Can't help but notice you're using the skills I taught you."

Anger spiked through Jonathan's body, making him clench his fists. It would just be so easy, _so_ easy to snap his neck and be done with it. As soon as he had the thought, it made Jonathan revolted in horror. His stomach lurched and Jonathan swallowed down on the urge to puke all over Lonnie's shoes.

He took a calming breath and let it out before saying, "My friend Joe taught me more than you ever did. And besides, this is just a job to get me through school. I'm not going to be doing this forever."

"Oh, like how I am?" Lonnie said, rolling his eyes. "Should've known you'd abandon your roots as soon as you hooked up with a girl from a rich family."

His jaw tight, Jonathan hissed, "You abandoned me first."

"No, your–" He gave a tight breath as he pointed off away from Jonathan. "Your _mother_ drove me away. All the crazy shit she used to say about me, about us?"

"She's not crazy." Jonathan took a step toward him, hating the fact that he was still shorter than Lonnie, and always would be. "She just realized that you were lying every time you said you were going to change."

Lonnie blustered a litte, but Jonathan was feeling dangerous. He stepped closer to Lonnie and said, "Guess what? _I_ can tell when you're lying, too." He poked Lonnie in the chest and said, "So, cut the shit and tell me why you're _really_ here."

The door to the shop opened, and Jonathan was surprised when he recognized without looking that it was Steve. Jonathan had been too distracted by Lonnie to keep track of his people the way he usually did. "Uh, hey," Steve said, letting the door close behind him and approaching slowly. "What's up?"

Without taking his eyes off his father, Jonathan said, "This is Lonnie. He was about to tell me why he followed me to work."

"Jesus Christ," Steve muttered, standing at Jonathan's shoulder. "Take a hint and get lost, man."

Lonnie looked back and forth between Jonathan and Steve. "What's this?"

Jonathan didn't answer. He was too close to breaking and admitting to Lonnie that Steve was, for all intents and purposes, his fiance. He was too close to admitting that Lonnie had been right about him, in that respect anyway. 

"Okay," Steve said, putting his hand on Jonathan's shoulder and pulling at him. "Walk away, b– _Jonathan_. I know that look. You're gonna do something you'll regret."

Jonathan let Steve pull him a few steps back, but he didn't trust Lonnie enough to look away from him. "Good idea," he said to Steve, putting a hand on his wrist. "I'm about _this close_ to snapping his neck."

A thrill of terror went through Lonnie, but he scoffed and rolled his eyes like he wasn't taking the threat seriously.

_Liar._

Steve turned toward Jonathan and murmured in a low voice, "Babe, please just let it go. I can't have you go to jail over this asshole."

"That's a good point," Jonathan told him. Keeping most of his senses on Lonnie, Jonathan finally tore his gaze away from him and looked at Steve. "What are you even doing here?"

"I'm on my way to work," Steve told him, then he held up a plastic bag with a take out box. "Nancy and I thought you might want some leftover pancakes. Get you through the afternoon."

“Thanks,” Jonathan said, taking the bag. "I just finished my lunch break, but I'll keep these for later."

Steve nodded. "Nancy's gonna be here to pick you up afterward. So… don't get on the train."

"Sure," Jonathan told him, turning back to give Lonnie one last look. "Just so you know, I _did_ give Will your number. If he hasn't called, it's because he doesn't want anything to do with you either."

With that, Jonathan went back into work, leaving Lonnie and Steve out in the alley together. He kept half his attention on Steve, just to make sure Lonnie wasn't going to start shit. Steve had a few more spikes of annoyance, but then he was on his way to work and pretty much fine.

Jonathan noticed Lonnie's Camaro in one of the bays on the other end of the shop. Luckily, Kevin hadn't put him in charge of it. If he had, Lonnie would probably be getting his car back with a few new key-scratch marks. 

The thing that really worried Jonathan was that even though he knew Lonnie was lying about something, Jonathan didn't know about what. He didn't know why Lonnie had been hanging around for the past few days. He didn't know why Lonnie even bothered to find him in the first place.

And Jonathan didn't know what everything about the night before meant either. It put him on edge, the tension making his muscles ache even more than they usually did at the end of a shift. It was just a few more hours. A few more hours, and Jonathan would be able to go home, back to the people who cared about him as much as he cared about them.

~*~

After her shift on Friday night, barely sleeping, and then stumbling the five blocks over to Robin's place on Saturday morning, Charlie was more grateful than ever that she didn't work Saturdays. Sure, it was the best day to make good tips, but Charlie didn't really need help in that matter.

Plus, not working on Saturdays meant that she could hang out with Robin most of the weekend.

Her shift on Sunday night always came too soon. Still, Charlie liked knowing that she was contributing to the household, paying her share of the bills. It was actually kind of easy to buy food for the apartment and convince each of the others that one of them had bought it. Jonathan was the hardest one to pull that deception over on, but Charlie had been getting better at shielding her emotions from him the more she practiced it. And really, it was just making sure they all had enough food when they needed it. No harm, no foul.

Plus, if she bought the ingredients, then she could usually get someone else (Jonathan) to cook them for her, and let him think he was being kind by sharing with her. Win-win, right?

The worst part of Charlie's week was the end of her Sunday shift. Yeah, she got out a little earlier than the other nights, but the train didn't come by nearly as often. She was left waiting alone, in the dark and cold, for longer than she felt comfortable with. 

That night, after how rattled Jonathan had been just the other night, Charlie almost called the apartment for someone to come give her a ride home. 

Almost.

Charlie had been living on her own (or fairly close to it) for over two years. Before that, she’d lived with Sean, who wasn’t too big on doing anyone favors, wife or not. And before that, Charlie had lived with her parents. Well, with the people she’d always known as her parents. As a teenager, she was loathe to ask them for _anything_ either.

So, Charlie was used to being independent. She knew Jonathan, Nancy, and Steve would do favors for her if she asked, probably without question. That “without question” part freaked her out. It felt like taking advantage of the weird affection they had for her.

They barely knew her, really, and yet they treated her like part of the family. The way Charlie had grown up, that sort of trust took _years_ to build. Not days. Not weeks. Not even the four months she’d been living with them.

So, asking for a ride home was out of the question. The train was fine, and Charlie carried illegal-in-Chicago bear spray in her coat pocket. She could handle herself.

Still, the walk home from the train stop felt too dark and too lonely. _No one_ was out on the street. It was like everyone could tell it was unsafe. 

Charlie was two blocks from the apartment when the hair on the back of her neck stood up. Something definitely felt _wrong_. As she came up to an alley, breathing hard, she gave into the urge to press close to the building and peek around the corner.

The alley was dark, but Charlie could _swear_ that she saw a figure standing in it, its slow movements striking Charlie as _wrong_ and _sinister_. As she watched it uncurled, standing taller, then taller still. It had to be at least eight feet tall, and suddenly Charlie was reminded of that evening back in November of 1983.

She clapped her hand over her mouth and bit her lips together so she wouldn't scream. 

_Oh, shit! No, no, no!_

Charlie wanted to run, to get away from there as fast as possible, but she couldn’t stop watching as it turned its head this way and that. It was looking for something. Searching. 

No, not something. 

_Someone_.

Charlie could feel its emotions. Rather, she could feel the emptiness and malice where there should have been emotions. She could feel its hunger. Its _need_.

She felt it when it noticed her. And Charlie could feel the way it _needed her_.

_Charlie, run! Run toward me!_

Charlie didn’t even think before sprinting toward where she knew Jonathan to be. She could feel the monster behind her, terribly excited by the hunt, moving fast and getting closer.

Oh, god! It was getting so close! 

Charlie had to… she had to get _away_!

She had to _hide_ , to get somewhere _safe_!

Instinctually, she grabbed for that place in the back of her head that meant _escape_. It meant _safety_.

_No!_ Jonathan cried in her head. _Stay grounded, sweetheart! We’re almost there. Just keep running!_

Charlie _felt_ the monster’s steps scraping against the pavement behind her. She could feel the air ruffle her hair as the monster grabbed for her and missed. Her lungs and legs burned painfully, but every muscle in her body screamed at her to keep going. 

_Get away!_

Three figures rounded the corner in front of her, and Charlie knew all she had to do was make it to them, and she’d be safe. Her family would make it safe. 

Jonathan put one hand out, straining as he pushed the monster back, keeping it from catching her. Behind him, Nancy had a long gun in her hands, the barrel pointed at the ground. Steve stood next to Charlie, a spiked bat sticking up over his shoulder, a bottle and a lighter in his hands.

When Charlie reached them, she took the hand that Jonathan offered her, and felt him draw on her as he struggled to keep the monster from moving any closer to them. Nancy stepped in front of Charlie, putting up her gun and calling out, “Steve! Now!”

Steve lit the strip of cloth sticking out of the bottle, gave it a beat, and then hurled the bottle at the monster. It hit the monster’s torso and shattered, splashing flames over most of its body.

The scream it gave out was otherworldly and made Charlie cling tighter to Jonathan. 

“Another!” Nancy cried, just before her gun let out a deafening blast, making the monster scream again. She shot it a second time before Steve lobbed another bottle, hitting its lower jaw-petal _thing_. The monster’s screams turned into gurgles, and then Charlie felt Jonathan draw on her again.

The monster’s head separated from its body, both pieces falling to the street, lifeless.

Steve laughed and whooped. “Ha, ha! Yeah! We got the motherfucker!”

Nancy lowered her gun with a relieved sigh.

Jonathan staggered and dropped to his knees, letting go of Charlie’s hand. Concerned, Charlie turned to look at him, horrified by the blood seeping from both his nostrils, the dark bags under his eyes, and the way his pale skin made the dark branching shapes of his veins stick out in stark contrast.

“You still with us, babe?” Steve asked, pulling a bag off his back and taking a cloth out. He pressed the cloth under Jonathan’s nose, steadying him with a hand on the back of his neck.

Putting a hand over Steve’s on the cloth, Jonathan gave a muffled, “Yeah, baby. I’m okay.”

“You look like hell,” Charlie told him, before feeling her own nose start to drip. Steve took another cloth out of his bag and handed it to her. When she used it to wipe her nose, it came back red.

“We should get out of here,” Nancy said, doing something to her gun before sticking it up the back of her long winter coat.

“What are we gonna do about that?” Steve asked, pointing over at the monster pieces.

Charlie watched as Nancy looked around for a second, then held her hand out to Steve. “Got a quarter for the phone?”

“I-I do,” Charlie said, reaching into her pocket and pulling out some coins. “Who are you calling?”

“Robin,” Nancy replied, taking the quarter Charlie gave her and jogging back down the street toward the main road. 

“That’s the only one, right?” Steve asked, standing and getting Jonathan up on his feet.

After closing his eyes for a second, Jonathan said, “Yeah. There aren’t any others around.”

“What the fuck was this one doing here in the first place?” Charlie asked, shivering and letting Jonathan pull her into a hug. 

“I don’t know,” he said, watching Steve take the bat out of his backpack and go over to the body.

Steve poked at the monster’s foot with his bat, and then its head, both lying motionless as he inspected them. “I think we should burn it,” he said, taking a capped bottle out of his bag. “Think this is enough fuel?”

“No,” Jonathan replied, letting go of Charlie and limping over toward Steve. 

Charlie went with him, unable to let him get further than arm’s reach away from her.

She told the guys, “You’d need a big pyre, or a cremation oven. All that’s gonna do is char the outside.”

Steve shrugged and put the bottle back in his bag, asking, “Do I wanna know how you know that?”

“I read stuff,” she told him. 

“We’ve gotta at least get it out of the middle of the street,” Jonathan said, digging into Steve’s bag and pulling out a coil of rope. He looped it around the monster’s leg and tied it off, and then he and Steve dragged it to the side of the road, pushing it under some bushes. 

A siren wailed in the distance, and it seemed to Charlie like it was getting closer. She rolled the head with her boot until it was over by the rest of the body. “Does anyone else feel like we should be getting out of here?”

At the end of the block hurried footsteps approached, but it was just Nancy, waving them over, hissing, “Come on!”

Charlie ran after Steve and Jonathan, and then they were all slipping back into the light-but-existent foot traffic on Halsted Street. Two cop cars raced down the road, headed north toward the side street where they’d stashed the body. Leaning toward Steve, Charlie said, “I think those cops are in for a nasty surprise.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” he replied, hooking his arm over her shoulders. His voice low, he asked, “Are you okay?”

Her whole body trembling, Charlie shook her head. “No.”

“Let’s get you home,” Steve insisted as they followed Nancy and Jonathan down the block and into their apartment building.


	3. The Morning After

Steve had only been awake for a few minutes, glaring at the time on the clock next to the bed, when he heard a light rapping on the apartment door. He got out of bed, trying not to disturb Jonathan, and pulled on his running sweats and a t-shirt before going to answer it.

A quick look through the peephole told him his guess was right and Robin was on the other side of the door. He unlocked it and opened it, ushering her in and whispering, "Jonathan's still asleep."

"Nancy?" Robin asked, looking around the main room as Steve closed the door again.

Steve shrugged. "She wasn't there when I woke up. Probably on her way to class." He went into the kitchen and got the coffee pot started, tilting his head to indicate that Robin should follow him. "Did you find the body?"

Robin sighed. "CPD cops found it first. I _think_ we managed to convince them it was an abandoned movie prop, and all the noise was a bunch of idiots filming a movie without permits." She rubbed her hand across Steve's back. "How's everyone doing?"

Shrugging, Steve told her, "Felt good to kill it. I actually slept a while." He hit the button to start the coffee and turned to face Robin. Speaking softly so only she would hear, Steve said, "Charlie was pretty shaken up. She kept saying something about how it _needed_ her."

"Is she still here?"

"Probably," Steve said. "I was going to make coffee before checking on her. She's _not_ a morning person."

Robin laughed a little bit and nodded. "No, she's really not."

Light footsteps down the hall preceded Nancy's surprising arrival. "Where were you?" Steve asked her, accepting her into his arms when she came over to him. "I thought you'd gone to class already."

Nancy shook her head and frowned at the clock. "I sat with Charlie so she would sleep."

"Did you sleep?" he asked her, brushing her hair away from her face.

Nodding, Nancy told him, "A couple hours." Then she turned to Robin, "Do you have any idea how that thing got here?"

Robin shook her head. "My boss talked to Owens, but even there we ran into a wall of classified information. I'm guessing that means they have no clue."

"Great," Steve said, hugging Nancy closer before she ducked away from him. "What are we supposed to do? What if there's another one? I can't carry around molotov cocktails to class."

"I can't walk around with a shotgun under my coat, either," Nancy said as she left, headed for the bedroom.

"When the fuck did you get a shotgun?" Robin asked Nancy, but after Nancy left without answering, she looked over to Steve.

"I think she borrowed it from Murray," he said, taking all of the mugs still sitting on the drying rack from when he'd washed them the evening before. "But seriously, Robin. You guys have no idea whether there could be another one of these things?"

"No clue," she said, accepting the mug of coffee he handed her. "You said Charlie thought it needed her?"

Steve nodded, stepping over to the fridge and frowning when he pulled out the jug of milk, finding it almost empty. "Shit. We forgot to go grocery shopping yesterday."

Nancy came back into the room, dressed with her hair up in a messy bun. "I'll try to remember to pick some up after class," she said, kissing Steve twice. "That second one's for Jonathan when he wakes up."

Steve laughed a little and nodded, watching Nancy as she gathered up her school things and left. "I should wake him up,” Steve said to Robin. “He’ll be pissed if I let him sleep through class.”

“Do you think…” Robin said, taking the mug of coffee Steve handed her. “I mean, could I go keep Charlie company?”

Steve shrugged, grimacing when he choked down a milkless sip of coffee. “Do I look like I’m in charge of her?”

"I guess not," Robin said with a little laugh. 

Steve left her in the kitchen and went back to his bedroom, where he found Jonathan still sleeping. He set the coffee he didn't want anymore on the side table and sat on the bed next to Jonathan. "Babe," he said, brushing his hand through Jonathan's hair. "C'mon. You should get up."

Jonathan mumbled before catching Steve's arm and pulling him closer. "You should come back to bed," Jonathan said, his eyes still closed.

Chuckling, Steve let Jonathan pull at him until he was laying down, draped over Jonathan. "It's Monday," he pointed out, but sighed and relaxed when Jonathan began slowly petting Steve's hair. "Come on, don't make me be the responsible one here. I'm not good at it."

Jonathan laughed before pulling Steve into a kiss. And then a couple more kisses. "I suppose I could miss my lecture," he admitted. "Borrow Stef's notes."

"Mm-hm," Jonathan replied, tugging on Steve's shirt and kissing him some more.

"Don't you have class too?" Steve asked, pulling his shirt off and tossing it onto the floor. "Gonna miss anything important?"

"Probably not." Jonathan pulled at Steve's leg until Steve was more fully on top of him, straddling his hips.

Steve kissed him a few more times before pulling back and telling him, "This is a situation where having friends in class comes in handy."

Jonathan met Steve's eyes for a long second before saying, "I changed my mind. I don't want to fuck you right now."

"Oh, come on," Steve said, laughing when Jonathan pushed him over onto the bed. "Just because I'm right?"

"Because you're being an asshole about it," Jonathan told him, but he was smiling as he got out of bed. He picked up the coffee from the nightstand and took a few long sips. "I can make it to my first lecture if I hurry."

"Fine," Steve said with a deep sigh, rolling out of bed and trying to find clothes that were both clean enough to wear in front of other people and weather-appropriate. "Rain check for after class?"

"Sure, baby," Jonathan said, leaning close enough for Steve to give him a kiss. "Oh, we were gonna go find Nancy a Valentine's present today. And Charlie a birthday present."

"Shit," Steve said, pulling on a sweatshirt. "We've gotta put Jenny's birthday card in the mail today too."

Jonathan drank more of the coffee, offering the last of it to Steve as he said, "Life doesn’t wait for monsters, does it?”

“Unfortunately not,” Steve said, taking the coffee and knowing he needed it, despite the awful taste.

Jonathan stopped short in the hallway, just before Steve heard Charlie shout, “Just go away!”

Robin stumbled out of Charlie’s room, a hurt and confused look on her face.

Steve gave Jonathan a glance, and made a split-second decision. Putting his hand on Jonathan's arm, Steve told him, "Go to class. I'll stay."

"Still want to meet at the cafe at 4?" Jonathan asked.

Steve nodded. "I'll be there. Go, babe. You're gonna miss the train."

Robin gave one more look back at Charlie's room before grumbling, "C'mon, Jonathan. I'll drive you to campus."

Jonathan nodded at Robin, then wrapped his hand around Steve's wrist and asked, "You're sure?"

"I'm sure," Steve insisted. "Like I said, I can get notes from Stef."

"I still think it's weird that your best school friend has basically the same name as you," Robin told him, letting Steve pull her into a hug.

"I'll figure out what's up," he assured her, ignoring her dig at his friendship with Stef. 

Steve decided to give Charlie a few minutes after Robin and Jonathan left before trying to talk to her. He busied himself in the kitchen, washing the coffee mugs, making _more_ coffee, making some toast and scrambled eggs. After eating, he made another round of food for Charlie and brought a plate, along with a mug of the new coffee, to Charlie's room.

Knocking on the door, Steve said, "Think you can put the asshole act on hold long enough to eat the food I've got for you?"

"No," she called back, but her tone was self-pitying enough that Steve felt comfortable opening her door and barging right in.

"Great," he said, sweeping into the room, setting the plate of food on Charlie's nightstand, and then opening her curtains. "Eat. Drink this coffee. You'll feel better."

"Easy for you to say," she pouted, but she sat up and took the coffee he handed to her. "You didn't have an eight-foot-tall monster hunting you last night."

He sat down in the chair in the corner and said, "I was sixteen the first time I fought one of those bad boys."

"Right," Charlie said, sighing and taking another sip of coffee. "Jonathan told me about that."

"Couldn't sleep by myself after that night," he admitted to her. "Still get nightmares when I have to."

Charlie looked at him for a long moment before saying, "Is that supposed to make me feel _better_?"

"Just…" Steve looked up at the ceiling, tucking his hair back behind his ears. "I know how freaky this stuff is. How scary it is." He looked at her again, watching as Charlie reached for the plate of food he'd brought her. "We _all_ do. Robin, too."

"She was treating me like a _child_." Charlie scoffed, pushing the eggs around on her plate.

"I doubt it," Steve told her. "Robin doesn't even treat _children_ like children."

Charlie raised an eyebrow, considering this as she took her first bite. She made a face, but chewed and swallowed. "You suck at cooking."

"I'm better at it than you," Steve replied, grinning when Charlie looked up at him.

She didn't exactly laugh, but the breath she exhaled was close enough to one that Steve was satisfied. After she ate for a moment, she asked, "Don't you have class?"

Steve shrugged. "I'll get the notes. This is more important."

"Your priorities are fucked up," she said, setting the mostly-full plate aside and laying back down. "I'll just stay here. Never go outside again. Don't worry about it."

"Yeah, because that's healthy," Steve said, rolling his eyes. He went over to the bed, sitting down on it next to Charlie. "Take it from someone who's been there. Getting out of bed and being around other people _helps_. Distracting yourself from thinking about it _helps_." He shook her a little bit, and then suddenly he was on the floor. "What the hell?"

Charlie turned over and looked at him with wide eyes. "Did I…?"

"Well, I didn't just fall off on my own," Steve said, standing up and rubbing his sore butt cheek. "You didn't mean to push me?"

"I _didn't_ push you," Charlie insisted, getting out from under her blankets and putting her feet on the floor. "At least, not with my hands."

"Ohhhh," Steve said, sitting back down next to her. "You must've learned how. From being around Jonathan. Maybe from helping him last night."

"And the first thing I do is hurt someone," Charlie muttered.

Steve put his arm around Charlie, insisting, "I'm not hurt, Charlie. It's just one of those things you have to learn how to control."

"Fat chance of that," she said, standing up. She pulled a pair of jeans on over the sleep shorts she was wearing, then put on a hooded sweatshirt. 

When she shoved her feet into a pair of combat boots, Steve asked, "Where are you going?"

"Out," she said, a good five feet past the bedroom door before it slammed shut.

Fuck, she was a fast learner.

Steve decided not to follow her. She'd be back when she was less freaked out.

Probably.

~*~

It had been awhile since Nancy had run on so little sleep. When she got back to the apartment (just before dark), she practically collapsed into bed. The only thing keeping her awake was the fact that no one else was home yet. Also, the only thing she'd eaten that day was a sandwich from the campus deli, which she'd eaten during the weekly organization meeting for the paper.

When Zach handed Nancy her assignments for the week at that meeting, he leaned in close and asked, "Are you okay?"

Nodding, Nancy told him, "Just had to pull an all-nighter. I'll be fine."

Now that she was back home, the only thing she had energy for was to make herself a peanut butter sandwich and eat it in front of the TV. Luckily she was still unscrewing the cap from the peanut butter jar when Steve and Jonathan came home with shopping bags and take out from the Chinese place down the street.

“Oh, that smells so good,” she said, putting the lid back on the peanut butter and kissing Jonathan hello. “You’re the best.”

“I paid for the food,” Steve said, grinning at Nancy until she laughed and kissed him too.

“Thank you, baby,” she said, pulling him close and kissing him again.

When he pulled back, Steve asked, “Charlie come home yet?”

Nancy shook her head. “She’s not here. Why?”

Steve shared a look with Jonathan before taking the carton Jonathan handed him and telling Nancy, “She had a rough morning.”

“She’s okay,” Jonathan assured them, grabbing a fork from the drawer and then taking the bag full of food over to the couch. 

Nancy brought her own utensils and drink over and joined him. “Where is she?”

“Not sure exactly,” Jonathan said. “She’s kinda trying to block me out. But I can tell she’s conscious and mostly fine.”

“It’s that _mostly_ I’m worried about,” Nancy said. She picked up the TV remote and turned it on. The TV was playing the local news and Nancy was just about to switch it to something more lighthearted when the story running caught her attention. 

“Last night, in the Lake View area of the city,” said the anchor, “residents were disturbed by an unauthorized late-night movie production. The CPD wants to assure residents that they did not hear authentic gunfire, and the miscreants responsible have been fined.”

Steve snorted as he sat down on Jonathan’s other side. “What fine? They should be paying _us_ for putting that thing down.”

Nancy’s smile was dampened by the next news item. 

“In other news out of the north side of the city, seventeen-year-old Rebecca Tyler has been missing since Friday night.” The broadcast showed a pretty girl with wavy blonde hair and a bright smile. Out of the corner of her eye, Nancy saw Jonathan set down his fork. “If anyone has seen her or knows of her whereabouts, they are urged to contact CPD as soon as possible.”

“That’s her,” Jonathan said, pointing at the screen, even after the segment changed. “That’s who called for help. The demogorgon got her.”

“Shit, she was only seventeen,” Steve said, putting his food down on the coffee table and leaning back, hands over his eyes. “What are we supposed to do?”

“We’ll tell Robin,” Nancy said, standing up and going to the phone on the kitchen wall. She dialed the number for Robin’s apartment and waited while it rang. Jonathan turned off the TV.

“Who’ssis?” Robin said when she answered. 

“Hey, it’s Nancy. Sorry to wake you.”

“Nance? Another one?” she asked, and it took Nancy a moment to realize Robin was asking whether she and the others had killed another demogorgon. 

“No,” Nancy assured her. “No, but we just saw the news and Jonathan knows who the demogorgon got on Friday. Her name was…”

Shit. Nancy couldn’t remember. She looked over at Jonathan, who said, “Rebecca Tyler.”

“Rebecca Tyler,” Nancy repeated into the phone. “She’s missing from close by. High school kid.”

“Okay, okay,” Robin said with a weary tone in her voice. “I’ll let my guys know in the morning. We’ll figure out where to take it from there.”

“Thanks,” Nancy said. Looking over at the boys, she asked Robin, “Have you talked to Charlie today?”

“Not since she kicked me out this morning. Why?” there was a rough edge to Robin’s voice, and Nancy knew her well enough at this point to place the worry.

“Jonathan says she’s fine. She’s probably just getting some space.”

“Yeah, probably,” Robin said with a sigh. “I’ll talk to you guys soon.”

“Okay, Robin. Thanks.”

After hanging up, Nancy went back over to the couch. She sat back down next to Jonathan and put her head on his shoulder. “I owe my mom an apology for every time I stayed out past curfew.”

Jonathan and Steve both chuckled. Jonathan picked up the carton of noodles they’d gotten for her. “Eat something, Nance. You’ll feel better.”

“Yeah,” she said, taking the noodles and picking up her fork again. “Maybe let’s not watch anymore TV.”

“Agreed,” Steve said, crowding closer on Jonathan’s other side. 

~*~

Jonathan was halfway through brushing his teeth when El visited him. It was such an easy, well-practiced connection, especially compared to the ones they'd forged over the summer, that Jonathan was able to drop into the Inbetween with half his attention, the other half still brushing his teeth and getting ready for bed. 

"You killed a demogorgon."

"Yeah," Jonathan told her, sharing his memory of the fight. "Turns out they don't keep going without a head."

El gave him an impressed nod before asking, "Any idea where it came from?"

"No," he told her as he finished brushing his teeth. "Does Owens know anything about it?"

"Not that I can tell." El wandered around the Inbetween for a moment. "You said Charlie thought it needed her for some reason?"

Jonathan nodded. "I got the same impression when it was hunting Rebecca Tyler."

El looked over, and then Will was with them. 

"When that one in Hawkins came after me," Will said, “I could tell how much it needed me for _something_.”

“For what?” Jonathan asked him. 

Will showed them a memory of his much-younger self coughing up a slug. A baby demogorgon. 

“Oh, no,” El said, showing them her own memory, this one of Barb Holland dead, the same sort of slug crawling out from between her blue lips.

“Is that what’s happening to Rebecca Tyler?” Jonathan asked them, showing them what he remembered of her picture from the news broadcast. “Is she already dead?”

El nodded. “Gone, gone, gone.”

Jonathan sighed and pulled her into a hug. “What about Charlie? Can you see if she’s okay? She’s blocking me out.”

“She’s blocking _everyone_ out,” Will told him. “From what we can tell, she doesn’t seem entirely…”

“Stable,” El finished for him. “Thunderstorms in her head.”

“I should’ve been keeping a closer eye on her,” Jonathan said. “It’s no wonder she’s freaking out. It was _inches_ from catching her before I got there.”

“Too much like before,” El said, looking to Will. “We felt her almost ‘port again.”

“Yeah, I felt that too.” Jonathan rubbed his face with his hand, walking across the hall and into his bedroom. “We don’t know what would happen if she ‘ported again.”

“We’re working on it,” Will told him, showing Jonathan the intricacies of the method they were working on. “The instabilities happen when you bend more space-time than you can handle.”

Jonathan thought about this for a minute, and about what Nancy had tried to teach him about physics. Eventually, he got to the point where he thought he understood enough to ask, “It happens when you ‘port too far?”

"Yeah, that's what we think," Will told him. "So far, we've only 'ported about ten yards."

"Jesus," Jonathan sighed. "Why are you even messing around with that?"

"If we can figure it out," Will said, putting his hand on Jonathan's shoulder, "then we can help Charlie learn how to do it safely. So she _doesn't_ cause anything bad to happen again."

"Oh." Jonathan nodded, more touched by the effort than he thought he’d be. "Okay. Thanks, guys."

El smiled at Jonathan and hugged him. "What is family for?"

Hugging El back, he said, “Hey, let me know if you find Charlie. I wanna bring her home if I can.”

“Okay,” El said, letting him go. Will nodded.

When Jonathan came back out of the Inbetween, he was laying in bed, wrapped around Nancy, holding her close. A minute later, Steve joined them, settling in against Jonathan’s back, kissing his shoulder. He turned out the light.

A minute after Steve got settled, he asked, “Hey, Nance?”

“Hmm?” she asked, close to sleep but not quite there.

“You gonna tell Jonathan the thing you told me the other day?” Steve asked, rubbing his hand up and down Jonathan’s shirt-covered back.

“The thing about the sex shop?” Jonathan asked. “She already told me.”

“Wait, what?” Steve asked, pressing on Jonathan’s hip for leverage as he sat up. “What sex shop thing? Nancy?”

“There’s something other than that?” Jonathan asked, looking over at Steve in the dim light from the window. Then he looked at Nancy as she sighed and turned toward them, asking her, “Sweetheart?”

"Oh, lord," she muttered, before she found his hand in the dark. “It doesn’t change anything about our relationship, okay, Jonathan? But I think I might be bi.”

Jonathan sighed with relief. “Oh, _that_.” Then he got confused and asked, “Wait, you _just_ realized?”

“Yeah, I just realized. How did _you_ know?” He could feel Nancy glaring at him in the dark.

Not wanting to provoke her, Jonathan said as carefully as he could manage, “Okay, I _thought_ you knew because you have the biggest crush on the girl at the grocery store.”

“Ooh, yeah,” Steve said with a little laugh. "I can see that. Good taste, Nance. She's cute."

"What?" Nancy asked, but she was also laughing. "I do not have a crush on her!" She sat up and smacked Jonathan lightly on the arm. 

Jonathan smiled and pulled her closer. "I don't mind. I trust you. Besides," he looked over his shoulder, "Steve falls half in love with most of the people he meets, and it hasn't been a problem so far."

"I– What?" Steve asked, his tone incensed. "I do not!"

Nancy giggled, reaching over Jonathan to kiss Steve. "You kind of do, baby."

Steve gave a token groan of protest, but Jonathan felt him give into their assessment of him. And then give into the way Nancy was kissing him. The spike of arousal coming off both of them reminded Jonathan of the way the conversation had started. "You wanna tell Steve what you want to buy from the sex shop?" he asked, running his hand up and down Nancy's back.

"Yeah, what is it?" Steve asked, ducking down to kiss Jonathan's neck. 

Nancy made a frustrated little noise before admitting, "I still can't say it out loud."

Jonathan's chuckle got cut off when Steve nipped at his neck, making Jonathan gasp. 

"What is it?" Steve asked, giving Jonathan one more kiss before climbing over him and crowding Nancy back onto the mattress. "Tell me, babe." The tone in Steve's voice allowed for no arguments, making Jonathan shiver beside them.

"I want…" Nancy said, doing something to Steve that made him whimper with arousal. She whispered, "To have my own cock. That I can wear sometimes. And use on you. If you want."

"If I…" Steve replied, and Jonathan could tell how suddenly and desperately aroused he got. "Shit, yeah I want that. Christ," he said, breathing hard as he kissed Nancy again. "That sounds so hot."

"You wanna settle for mine today, baby?" Jonathan asked, running a hand down his back to his underwear-clad ass, where he already found Nancy's hand.

"Y-yeah," Steve said, reaching over and kissing Jonathan hard. "Ooh, can I be in the middle tonight?"

Jonathan smiled at his enthusiasm and asked, "What do you think, Nance?"

“I think I need your mouth first, Steve,” she said. “Unless you think you can last long enough in the middle.”

Steve gave a harsh breath that was something like a laugh. “No chance.”

Jonathan helped Steve get Nancy’s shirt off, and then he let Nancy draw him into kissing her, slipping his tongue against hers and melting at the taste. He had just gotten his hand on one of her breasts, cupping it, when a sharp pain lanced through his head. 

“Ow, fuck,” Jonathan said, pressing a hand to the left side of his forehead and trying to figure out where the pain was coming from.

Nancy said, “Sorry, honey. Did I get you with my teeth?”

“No, it’s…” Jonathan started to say, but he was interrupted by Will’s voice in his head. 

_We know where she is_.

_Show me_ , Jonathan replied, turning away from Nancy and Steve, putting his feet on the floor.

Will showed him Charlie sitting in a dark, snowy park, nursing a bottle of beer. There were four more empty bottles lined up in the snow ten feet away. Charlie scowled at the bottles and then made a hand gesture. Nothing happened.

“Fuck,” Charlie said, taking another sip of beer. She tried again and the leftmost bottle flew through the air, crashing against a tree and shattering. 

As Jonathan studied her closer, he could tell that she'd dropped her shield completely. And although she'd been drinking, the emotional pain coursing through her mind was clearly the source of Jonathan's headache.

He had no idea what she was trying to accomplish, but it wasn’t anything good. Jonathan sent a quick thanks to his brother before coming up out of the Inbetween. “Charlie is drinking,” he told the others. “And probably giving herself hypothermia. I should go get her.”

“We’re coming with you,” Nancy said, and when Jonathan looked over at them, Steve nodded earnestly. Jonathan wanted to argue that Charlie was his responsibility. This was all his shit he’d passed onto her, so it was his job to help her deal with it. Except Jonathan knew them, and he knew that he’d lose that argument. 

Sighing, Jonathan said, “Okay. Dress warmly. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to convince her to come home.” He found a pair of long pajama pants that would fit under his loosest pair of jeans, and pulled both of them on. Then he put on a long sleeve t-shirt, a sweater, one of Steve’s hooded sweatshirts, and two pairs of socks.

Once all three of them were bundled up, Jonathan said, “She’s far enough away. I think we should take the car.”

“I’m not sure I can even sit down in the car while wearing this many clothes,” Nancy said with a little laugh as she led the way down the staircase and toward the side street where they’d parked the car on Saturday night.

Jonathan had Steve drive, and he gave directions as they got closer and closer to Charlie. Eventually they made it to the park where Charlie was now lying in the snow in the middle of a clearing, staring up at the cloudy night sky. Looking at the small stand of trees beyond the clearing, Jonathan felt an irresistible need to double check that there wasn't anything dangerous lurking in them. Charlie probably wouldn't be lying here like this if there was, but she'd also been drinking, so he didn't exactly trust her judgement.

Wanting to meet her where she was, Jonathan trudged through the snow over to her and laid down next to her. Nancy and Steve followed his lead, laying down as well. "What's going on?" Jonathan asked carefully, hating how fuzzy and out of focus Charlie felt to him. 

Charlie sighed and eventually said, "I ran out of beer."

"It only makes things feel better for a little while," Jonathan told her, thinking about his own meltdown just before Thanksgiving freshman year. God, he'd done so much living since then. It felt like forever ago. "I gotta warn you, when it wears off, all the pain only comes back worse."

"Good reason not to stop," Charlie said, but Jonathan felt the way her heart wasn't in it. "You guys shouldn't have come here. I'm too fucked up for this."

"For what?" Nancy asked gently.

Charlie didn't answer her. She looked up at the sky as little flakes of snow started to drop, floating lazily downward. Eventually, she said, "I wish it would go back to being just a stupid dream. When it was just my crazy brain. Monsters aren't real." She scoffed, wrapping her arms around herself. "They _can't_ be real."

“I wish they weren’t,” Jonathan told her. “I really do. But they _are_."

Charlie hummed in response before folding her hand into Jonathan's glove-covered one and squeezing. It wasn't skin contact, but it brought Charlie close enough to him that Jonathan could see the memory that kept playing through her mind. He watched the demogorgon turn and recognize Charlie just before his own voice told her to run. The sheer terror of that moment repeated over and over like a needle skipping on a record.

Jonathan wondered if this was what his mind was like in the days after fighting the demogorgon. He barely remembered most of that time, but the memories he did have were still _intense_. He could still remember the monster's cool breath on his face and its sticky slime sliding down his cheek and onto his neck. Back then, even though the monster had knocked him down and pressed him into the floor, Jonathan had felt lucky its long claws hadn't stabbed him.

Thinking about what Will had told him, Jonathan made the grim realization that maybe it wasn't luck. Maybe the demogorgon hadn't been inches from eating him, but instead had been seconds from dragging him into the Upside Down and planting slugs in his belly. In either case, it was Steve who'd saved him. It was Nancy who'd pulled him to his feet. It was the both of them who'd slept next to him every night that week, and for most of the nights afterward, so he didn't have to be alone.

Looking over at Charlie, Jonathan squeezed her hand and told her, "You act like you're all alone, like you have to deal with this on your own, but you're not. You're not alone, Charlie."

She sniffled, rubbing at her face with her free hand. "I'm not a child."

"I never said you were," Jonathan insisted.

Nancy cleared her throat and said, "Needing help doesn't make you a child. It just makes you human."

Charlie took a deep breath, then scoffed. "Am I, though?" The tree off to Jonathan's right at the edge of the clearing shook, snow showering down from its branches. "Humans can't do that shit. Humans don't have to worry that they'll get too scared and accidentally fuck up the entire space-time continuum. Again."

"Hey," Nancy said in her no-nonsense tone, sitting up and shuffling over so she was looking down at Charlie. “You’re at _least_ half human, because that’s what I am.”

Steve gave an amused snort before saying, “Yeah, jury’s still out on Jonathan.”

“I’m at least half human too,” Jonathan insisted, thinking about Lonnie and hoping he had finally left town. Jonathan squeezed Charlie’s hand again. “That makes you three quarters human. I’d say that’s close enough.”

“Can we get out of the snow?” Nancy asked. “I’m getting really cold.”

Charlie sighed, looking up at her. “Yeah, I guess.”

“In the morning,” Jonathan said, getting to his feet and giving Charlie a hand up, “we’ll go to Springfield. You and me.”

"You have class," Charlie argued, swaying a little on her feet. 

"Some things are more important than class," Jonathan told her as Steve put her arm over his shoulders, holding her up. "And your health is important to me."

Charlie nodded, looking down at the ground and not at him. As they walked back to the car, Jonathan tried to get a good read on Charlie, but the alcohol was blurring everything together. Only time would tell if she was going to accept his help, or if she would keep running away.


	4. Regroup

“Thanks for the ride,” Nancy said as she and Robin pulled into the far side of the mall parking lot. “I tried to get Murray to meet someplace the train could take me to, but he’s being even more paranoid than normal.”

“A monster showed up in the city,” Robin pointed out, cutting the engine. “Can you blame him?”

“Not really, no,” Nancy said with a sigh. “I hope he doesn’t keep us waiting long. I have homework due tomorrow.”

"Did he give you any indication what he wanted to talk about?" Robin asked, taking her hair down and redoing the bun on top of her head.

"Not much of an idea," Nancy replied, taking a small notebook and a pen out of her purse. "Anything you can share from your end of things?"

Robin frowned, then took a sharp breath. "Just something odd I noticed."

Her curiosity piqued, Nancy asked, "What?"

"One of the Execugen prisoners awaiting trial? Olive Thompson?"

"Was that one of the nurses?"

Robin shook her head. "She was Jenny's teacher."

Nancy knew, particularly from the conversations she'd had with Jonathan about his little sister, that Jenny hadn't been treated very well by her teacher. She asked Robin, "What about her?"

"I've been keeping track of the visitor logs," Robin said, unbuckling her seat belt and reaching into the back seat for her bag. She pulled out a file folder and opened it. After flipping through a few pages, she stopped at one and showed it to Nancy, pointing at one of the names.

"Kenneth Fry," Nancy read, following the rest of the entry across the width of the paper. "He's her lawyer."

"Right," Robin said. "Except she's not paying him. I've got eyes on all her financials, trying to build the case against her. And all of the Execugen assets have been frozen as a matter of course for the investigation."

"So, who's paying him?" Nancy asked.

Robin nodded. "Since he's her attorney, I can't investigate his accounts. _However_ , a bank account with his name on it did come up on a list of payouts coming from one of the shell companies that I think is associated. We haven't been able to prove that link, and I'm getting a lot of pushback not to look into it further."

"Why?" Nancy asked, copying down the lawyer's name. "Who does the account belong to?"

"One of the higher-ups in the defense department," Robin admitted. "Alan Brown."

Nancy wrote that name down too, whispering, "Holy shit."

"Yeah," Robin said in agreement, putting the file folder back into her bag. 

"So this whole thing could have been a D.O.D. black op? Or do you think Mr. Brown has been funding this on his own?"

"Brown seems more like a clearing house, but I can’t be sure. Hell, he might be the one giving orders," Robin said, sighing. "That, and the pushback I'm getting? If the D.O.D. wasn't funding Execugen, they at least signed off on it."

"And selling Jenny to the highest bidder?" Nancy asked "Why would the D.O.D. fund the development of essentially _a weapon_ , and then sell her to a private citizen for his own monetary gain?"

"I don't know," Robin said, pushing her thumbs against her closed eyelids. "Maybe a girl who reads memories wasn't the weapon they were hoping for."

"Jesus," Nancy said with a sigh, looking down at the names she'd written in her notebook. "Have you given these to Murray yet?"

Robin shook her head. "I just barely got Alan Brown's name attached to that account. But if I give it to Murray and he gets caught poking around, they're going to know it was me."

"Shit, they are," Nancy said. "Maybe we'll have to lead him there a little more organically. Suggest he check out the prison visitor logs, take it from there?"

"I do like that idea."

Nodding, Nancy put her hand on Robin's arm. "It's going to be okay. Murray and I have channels and informants you don't. We'll piece it back together."

"Maybe you guys can figure out where the monster terrorizing my girlfriend came from," Robin said, giving Nancy the saddest smile.

Nancy pulled Robin into a hug. "She'll be okay. Jonathan's taking care of her."

"Why wouldn't she let _me_ take care of her?" Robin asked, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. "I can be caring!"

Nancy squeezed Robin tighter for a moment before letting go. "I mean, I don't know for sure. But I could take a guess?"

"Sure."

Letting go, Nancy sat back in her seat, looking out the window as she gathered her thoughts. Then she said, "From what I've been able to piece together, the last time Charlie saw one of these things, her husband didn't believe her. It wasn't long after that he left."

"Shit," Robin said, taking a deep breath. "How do I convince her I'm not like her douchebag ex?"

Shrugging, Nancy said, "I honestly don't know. Maybe try letting her know that you're ready to be there for her when she's ready to let you?"

Robin shook her head. "That's too… Well that sucks. What if we go through this and then something else happens? Because it always does. Is she gonna disappear on me again?"

Nancy pinched the bridge of her nose. "I don't know. I can't read her mind or her emotions or anything. You probably just have to talk to her."

Robin groaned in frustration.

"Yeah, I know," Nancy told her. "But talking gets easier the more often you do it."

"Did you talk to Jonathan and Steve?" Robin asked. "You know, about the thing you figured out on Friday?"

Nancy chuckled. "Yeah, I did."

"And?"

It was starting to get cold in the car, so Nancy rubbed her hands together. "Well, Steve wasn't surprised, and Jonathan already knew."

Robin snorted. "Why can't my psychic girlfriend just know everything without me having to tell her?"

Nancy gave a little hum of agreement. Then she said, "Telling people what's on your mind, even if they already knew, is a sign of trust. Charlie's trust has been broken several times." 

Nancy looked out the window, trying and failing not to include herself on the list of people who'd broken Charlie's trust. Yeah, maybe she'd been a baby at the time and didn't remember, but Nancy _had_ been the first one to break Charlie's trust – when she gave Charlie away. 

Luckily, before Nancy could think her way too far down that shame spiral, Murray pulled up next to them in his creepy van.

Nancy rolled down her window. "You have something?"

"Not much," Murray admitted. "I know they brought Zelnick back to the states, but I can't get anyone to talk about him. Best I got is an interview with one of the above-ground guards. He knew next to nothing, but he did notice something big getting moved out of the prison. More than once."

"Something big?" Nancy asked him. "Maybe something demogorgon big?"

"Possibly," Murray noted. "They loaded whatever it was into a refrigerated truck."

"They like it cold," Nancy said more to herself than anyone else. "Wait. Several times? How many is several? How many of these things do they have?"

"Well, one less _now_ ," Murray said with a grin. "How did Wanda work out?"

Nancy felt nauseated at the reminder that Murray had named his shotgun. "Fine. Good. But like we thought, Jonathan had to be the one to kill it. The buckshot and the fire slowed it down long enough to give him the chance."

"Useful information," Murray said. Then he ducked down and waved, "Hey, little miss FBI! How's it going?"

With an annoyed grimace, Robin said, "Fine! Just cleaning up everyone else's mess, like always!"

Murray laughed.

Needing to keep things on track, Nancy asked, "What about Execugen? Last we talked you were getting in contact with some people in D.C."

"Right," he said, clapping his hands together gleefully. "I've been working with a forensic accountant out there. So far we don't have much aside from public records and the _very_ limited records you managed to liberate from the facility. Still, there's a couple of holding accounts in the Caimans that trace back to a branch of First Federal in the heart of D.C. Someone there knows where the money came from and what it was meant to accomplish."

Nancy nodded. Then she said, "I want to dig into the lives of the prisoners a little bit more. See if I can find any connections to D.C. After all, there had to be some reason those people were chosen to work there. Some reason, some leverage, that made them trustworthy?"

Throwing his hands wide, Murray said, "Well, you're certainly welcome to try."

"See if you can get a better idea of how many monsters the Russians might have gotten out of Hawkins. I don't like this 'several' business," Nancy said.

"Getting a little mama bear over the weekend's excitement?" he asked with a knowing grin.

Nancy wished she'd never told him Charlie was her daughter. "I'll see you soon."

"Later!" he replied, backing out of the parking spot and driving away. 

As Robin started her car, she asked Nancy, "Are you afraid for her?"

"Yes," Nancy admitted. "Yes, of course I am. But what am I going to do, other than be prepared? Just in case?"

"Yeah, I don't know," Robin said, pulling out of the parking spot. "I really, really don't."

~*~

Charlie felt like shit the whole drive down to Springfield, her head pounding and her stomach rolling everytime the car jostled her even a little. After a bigger dip in the road, Jonathan said, "Sorry. I'm trying to be careful."

"Ugh," Charlie said back to him.

Eventually they made it down to Springfield and pulled up to the Byers family house. It didn't feel like coming home to her the way she could tell it did for Jonathan. Charlie had only been here twice before, at Thanksgiving, then again around Christmas. Still, there was a calm sort of energy around the place, something soothing. 

Charlie thought it was just one of those things that she was still getting used to, but Jonathan looked up at the house and frowned. "What _is_ that?" he asked. 

Charlie shrugged and followed him up the driveway and into the house. It was the middle of the day on a weekday, so no one else was there, even though she'd heard Jonathan call first thing in the morning to tell his family they were coming. Charlie didn't know what use this was going to be. 

Even if, somehow, Jonathan could help her get over her fear of the demogorgon that was supposedly dead, there was still all her other shit. It had taken almost twenty-three years to get this way. How could Jonathan fix it all in one day?

Charlie followed Jonathan into the basement of the house, and almost ran into him when he stopped short. There, sitting on a table pushed up against the basement wall, was a box with wires and dials. Suddenly, Charlie realized, "It's like one of those things you and Nancy built. Over the summer."

"Why would they leave it on like this?" Jonathan asked, looking at the device. 

There was a note taped to the side of it, and when Charlie moved closer, she saw it said, "Important: Do Not Touch."

Jonathan saw the note and shook his head. "Okay." Then he nodded toward the door next to the bottom of the stairs. "Let me show you how to turn the tub on."

Except as they got into the room, it was obvious that everything was already running. The air in the room was much warmer than the rest of the basement outside, and water was gurgling through the filter apparatus next to the tub. 

Jonathan sighed. "Nevermind."

He looked around, like he was a little lost. Then the expression vanished, and he pulled himself back together. "Okay. Let's get started."

Charlie didn't know what good this was going to do, but she was here now and didn't have anything better to do. After Jonathan left the room, she took a shower, put on some loose clothes that could safely get wet, and got into the tub. As she relaxed, the lights started to bother her. Wondering if she could flip the switch from all the way over here, Charlie tried it.

Between being calm in the tub, and the easy atmosphere the device in the next room provided, flipping the light switch was simple. The room fell into darkness, and all Charlie could hear was the sound of her own heartbeat in her ears. And then Jonathan's voice was in her head, asking,  _Ready?_

Charlie felt the invitation that went with his question, so she followed him into that dark space Jonathan called the Inbetween. "So, how do we do this?"

Jonathan took her hands in his, and he asked, "Can you show me where the pain is coming from? What hurts the worst?"

"I don't know," Charlie told him, sharing with him the clawing, suffocating fear in the back of her head. "It's always there. All the time."

"Since when?" he asked, poking at the memories attached to the fear. "Oh, that makes sense," he said, watching the memory of Charlie having a vision of what Will went through with the demogorgon back in '83. The memory ended when Charlie woke up in the abandoned cabin out in Cedarville. And then it started back up again, the terror at being chased through the woods and into the house overwhelming.

"Hey," Jonathan said, drawing Charlie's attention from the memory over to him. "It's in the past. That monster is dead."

"It's not the only one," she told him.

Nodding, Jonathan said, "Right, but that's not a problem for right now. That's a problem for later." He squeezed her hands tighter and ducked over until she met his eyes. "We have to get you out of replaying this memory over and over. You can't stay stuck like this."

"If I knew how to forget it I would," she told him, trying to pull away, but he wouldn't let her.

"That's why we're here, sweetheart," he said, and this strong spike of love came from him along with the pet name. 

Even after all this time of getting used to it, Charlie still didn't understand _why_ Jonathan loved her like he did. She showed him the list of everyone who had been lost, their lives destroyed because of her mistake.

In turn, Jonathan showed her his memories of all the people he'd hurt.

"You were always defending yourself."

"So were you," he pointed out, showing her back her own memory of the moment she decided to _escape_ the monster, even though it wasn't real. 

Trembling, Charlie insisted, "My victims were innocent bystanders, yours were trying to hurt you."

"I should have stayed with you," he told her, showing her a memory of him holding her as a sleeping baby. "It wouldn't have happened if I'd stayed with you, taught you how to control this."

"I've thought about that," she told him, quickly running him through her thought process.

Jonathan licked his lips and nodded. "If I'd stayed with you, prevented you from 'porting, Nancy wouldn't have been trapped. You wouldn't have been born. It's always been a closed circle of events."

"Yeah. So, now what? This is…" she showed him that part of her mind that felt like an escape hatch. "It's too much responsibility. I want to cut it out, turn it off, go back to being normal."

Jonathan pulled her closer, into a hug. "We can't change that. All we can do is learn how to live with it."

" _How_?" Charlie demanded of him. She showed him the monster chasing her through the streets of Chicago. She made him feel the moment when she decided to escape, only to abort going through with it when he stopped her. She made him feel the frustration and the fear and the _pain_ of almost repeating the biggest mistake of her life.

"If I'm drinking," she told him, pulling her hands away, "then I won't be able to do it again."

"You don't know that," he said, showing her his memory of her tipsy and still able to throw a beer bottle with her mind.

"So, what? What options are left?" Charlie asked him. "Kill myself?"

"No!" Jonathan cried, his pain at the thought overwhelming. He took a few shaky breaths, and Charlie let him pull her close again. "We just have to practice redirecting your flight response into a fight response instead."

"You want me to _fight_?" she asked, looking down at her hands. "I don't… I'm not…"

With a little bit of amusement in his smile, Jonathan said, "No, not like that. Like _this_." He showed her holding back the demogorgon using his powers. He showed her snapping its neck. He showed her pulling its head off its shoulders. 

"I can't…"

Then Jonathan _reached in_ and found her memory of slamming her bedroom door using her powers. He found her memory of shaking the snow loose from the tree in the park. He found her memory of turning off the tub room light.

"You _can_ ," he said, his tone completely oblivious to what he had just done.

Shaking with anger, Charlie pushed him away. "You can't just go through my memories like that!"

She felt a spike of shame coming from Jonathan's direction. "I'm sorry. You’re right. I shouldn't have done that without asking." He put himself where she would have to meet his eyes again. "I won't do it again."

Her chest feeling tight, Charlie told him, "I need a break." She pulled herself up out of the Inbetween, and then up out of the tub. She stripped out of her wet clothes and left them on the floor, then rinsed the clinging salt from her skin. 

As she finished up, Jonathan told her,  _I am sorry._

Charlie didn't respond.

_ I'll give you some space _ , Jonathan told her.  _I'll be back in an hour._

After putting on some of the pajamas she'd packed for the trip, Charlie waited until she heard Jonathan leave the house before she left the tub room. She considered finding her coat and shoes and seeing how far she could get before one of the Byers found her. A second later, she realized this was her defaulting to _flight_ again.

Jonathan wanted her to fight instead?

Fine, Charlie would stay. She would fight _him_ thinking he could just dig through her memories like they were his own. They _weren't_. She wasn't his either. Yeah, maybe he and Nancy were the reason she existed, and maybe Charlie wanted to be part of this family. But it didn't mean Jonathan's sense of ownership over her was something she just had to get used to. 

No one _owned_ her. 

Not her parents in Arizona, not Sean, not Nancy, or Steve, or Jonathan either. 

She crossed the basement, opening the guest room door on the other side of the open space. Charlie decided to claim the bed, crawling under the covers, and trying not to shudder as she made a realization. If she only belonged to herself, and no one else, she had to be the one to take responsibility for changing.

As scary and as daunting as that change seemed to be.

~*~

When Steve showed up at work on Tuesday afternoon, the front house manager, Sullivan, caught his arm and asked him, “What’s going on with Charlie? She flaked out on her shift last night.”

“Shit,” Steve said with a sigh. He supposed he'd better come up with some normal-sounding excuse. “She was really sick. Puking everywhere. She must’ve forgotten to call.”

Sullivan nodded. “We ended up short staffed. Martin and Gabby had to cover her tables. It was _extremely_ stressful.”

“Jesus, I'm sorry," Steve said. "When is she scheduled to work next?"

"A long split shift tomorrow," Sullivan told him. 

Steve opened his mouth to offer to cover for her, but then he remembered he had a midterm the following afternoon that he couldn't miss. "I can cover her evening shift," Steve said, "but someone else will have to do the lunch service."

"Find someone," he ordered, leaving Steve nodding obediently.

During his mid-shift break, Steve used the pay phone in the lobby to call the Byers house in Springfield. El answered, her voice happy as she said, "Hello?"

“Hey, it’s Steve. How are things going?”

"They're okay," El told him. Lowering her voice she said, "but Jonathan and Charlie have been fighting, which wasn't helping anything. I decided to send him home. He's on his way back now."

"Without her?" Steve asked.

"Yeah."

With a deep sigh, Steve nodded. "Any idea how long Charlie is going to stay with you guys?"

"As long as she needs to. Will and I will help her get it under control," El assured him.

"Okay, okay," he said. "What about school? You're not going to miss anything, are you?"

"No," El assured him. "Charlie's doing most of the work. We're just going to help keep her on track."

Steve told her, "You're the best." Then he added, "I've got to get back to work. Let us know how it goes."

"I will," she told him, and Steve could hear her smile in her voice. Hanging up and going back to work hurt. He wanted to be there for Charlie. He wanted to help her somehow. He guessed he was just going to have to leave it up to the experts. 

As Steve left La Grâce after his shift, a car parked on the street honked. Turning to look, Steve saw Robin's car, and Robin at the wheel. He went over and got in, saying, "Hey. What's up?"

"Nancy wanted me to get you home safe tonight," she said, pulling away from the curb and heading north toward their neighborhood. "How's it going?"

"Oh, you know," Steve said, leaning his head back and closing his eyes. "Exhausted. The usual."

"Any word from Springfield?"

Keeping his eyes closed, Steve told her, "Jonathan's heading back. Leaving Charlie there for a bit. I guess they got into a fight about something."

Robin was silent for a long moment as she drove. 

It was a thick sort of silence Steve wasn't used to. He felt compelled to look over at her and ask, "What?"

Shaking her head, Robin said, "I don't know. I guess I'm kind of glad it's not just me. She's fighting with Jonathan too." Scoffing, she added, "But if this is the person she becomes when shit gets crazy? I don't know if it's going to work out." 

Steve didn't know how to respond to that. If Robin and Charlie broke up, and it turned bad, that could complicate a lot of things. He'd have to think twice about inviting Robin over, or he'd have to plan parties and holidays and stuff so only one of them was there at a time. It would suck.

"Maybe you could ask her for me?" Robin asked.

Confused, Steve figured he'd missed something. "Ask her what?"

"What she's thinking, about me? What kind of time frame we're talking about before she talks to me again?"

"Yeah, no. I can't do that, Robs," he said, rubbing his face with his hands. "Don't put me in the middle of this, okay? I care about both of you. It's not fair."

She made a distressed noise, but eventually she sighed. "Yeah, I suppose you're right. Shit."

"Just call the house, like tomorrow or something," Steve told her. "Tell Charlie to call you when she's ready."

"No, you're right," Robin said. "I just… I don't know how to do this."

Thinking about the times he'd been separated from Nancy or Jonathan, Steve sighed. "No one does. It's hard. Just…" He shook his head. "Sometimes just _being_ there is all you can do. Like, not trying to push them into talking it out or fixing it or anything, just being there for when they're ready to do those things."

"Is this about Charlie? Or is it about Jonathan?" Robin asked him.

Steve told her, "It's about anybody, okay? Anybody you care about."

Robin looked through the windshield and stuck out her chin defiantly, but a few seconds later she nodded. "We'll see."

"Yeah, we will."

When they got to his building, Steve said, "Thank you for the ride, Robin." 

"No problem," she insisted, giving him a careful smile.

"Call me when you get home, okay?"

Robin nodded. "Yeah, I will. Good night, Steve."

"Good night, Robin."

~*~

When Steve got home, Nancy was still up, doing all the school work she should have been doing over the weekend, instead of preparing to kill a monster from the Upside Down. "Hey," she said to him from the kitchen table. 

Steve came over and gave her a kiss before flopping down onto the couch. His mouth was kind of buried in the cushions when he spoke, but Nancy thought he asked something like, "He home yet?"

"Not yet," Nancy replied, setting down her pen. "He called an hour ago. Should be here soon."

Steve grunted, and his demeanor seemed grumpier than usual. 

Nancy pushed back from the table and went over to Steve, sitting down on the floor and petting his hair. "Honey? What's going on?"

Turning his face slightly out of the cushions, he said, "I think Robin and Charlie are going to break up. It's going to be so awkward."

"Maybe they won't," Nancy told him, rubbing her hand across his back. "Maybe El can help Charlie the way she helped Jonathan." 

"Hope so."

Nancy heard familiar footsteps coming up the stairs and toward the apartment door. Jonathan's keys slipped into the lock and a second later the door opened. Jonathan found them right away, saying, "Hey," as he came through the door, then closed it and locked it behind him. 

"Hey," Nancy replied, tilting her head up, so Jonathan could bend down and kiss her. 

He kissed Steve next, kind of sideways and upside down, but Steve didn't seem to mind.

"How'd it go?" Nancy asked Jonathan, letting him pull her up to her feet and lead the way toward their bedroom. 

"Not great," he said, taking off his coat and throwing it over the chair in the corner of their room. Steve wrapped his arms around Jonathan from behind, holding him as Jonathan sighed. "I tried to push her too fast. It's better for the others to help her, I think." He closed his eyes and nodded. "Yeah. It's better."

Nancy shared a look with Steve as she pressed close to Jonathan and hugged him too. Steve nodded at her and kissed the side of Jonathan's neck. In a soft voice, he asked, "Want us to take care of you, babe?"

Jonathan sighed. "It's late."

"Not that late," Nancy told him, slipping her hands up under his sweater and placing them on the skin at his hips as she rose up on her toes to kiss him. 

As she dropped back down again, she met Jonathan's eyes and asked him again with the expectant expression on her face. When he didn't respond right away, she said, "You need sleep more, huh?"

"No," he said, sounding frustrated. "I don't know."

"Okay," she said, but she caught the hem of Jonathan's sweater and pulled it up. Steve helped her and together they got it up over his head. 

Once they got his undershirt off too, Jonathan swayed forward toward Nancy, catching her face in his hands and kissing her. Nancy kissed him back, taking a sharp breath when he licked her bottom lip. She grabbed for the fly of his jeans, but Steve's hands were already there, undoing the fly and then pushing them down toward the floor. 

Nancy let Jonathan take off her sweater and the shirt she wore under it, but then Steve pulled Jonathan away from her, kissing him and pushing him gently onto the bed. When Jonathan sat down, Steve kneeled on the floor, taking Jonathan's pants the rest of the way off and kissing his knee. Jonathan smiled, pulling Steve into a few more kisses. Nancy undressed the rest of the way and then helped Jonathan get Steve undressed.

When Jonathan said, "C'mere," and pulled Nancy into his lap, she went to him. Pressed close to Jonathan, she kissed him, shivering at the way he moved his hands over her back. Steve pushed her hair to one side and kissed the back of her neck before he ran his hands up Jonathan's arms, and then back down to his wrists.

"Lay back, babe," Steve said, holding onto Jonathan's hands as he laid back, lowering him down. Nancy followed him, laying on Jonathan and kissing his neck. 

Taking a sharp breath, Jonathan asked, "Want me to move up further?"

"No," Steve said, and Nancy watched as he pressed first one, and then the other of Jonathan's wrists to the bed. "I want you right here."

"Fuck," Jonathan breathed as Nancy wrapped her hands around Jonathan's wrists, holding him in place while Steve kissed down her back.

"Good?" Nancy asked Jonathan, looking down at the calm, pleased expression on his face.

Jonathan nodded, lifting his chin and pursing his lips until Nancy kissed him again. While they kissed, Steve pressed close behind her, getting one of his hands between her and Jonathan. He pressed his fingers to the mound around her clit, stroking her in a slow circle, warming her up. Nancy groaned against Jonathan’s lips, squeezing his wrists, and Jonathan groaned in response.

It didn’t take long for Nancy to get really wet. She broke away from kissing Jonathan and told Steve, “Stop _teasing_!”

He laughed and kissed Nancy’s shoulder as he pulled his hand away. “Okay if I touch you, Jonathan?” he asked.

Nancy stopped kissing Jonathan long enough for him to answer, “Y-yeah. Yes, baby.”

Then Steve guided Jonathan’s hard cock to Nancy’s pussy, slicking him up a little before helping him slip inside. Nancy and Jonathan both groaned at the feeling, and she couldn’t help but start lifting and dropping her hips in a slow, decadent rhythm. 

Steve dropped onto the bed next to them, whispering something to Jonathan and getting a nod from him and a series of desperate kisses. Steve pressed a kiss to Nancy’s mouth as well, and then he left again. When Steve came back a moment later, he put a hand on Nancy’s lower back. “Hold still a second, Nance.”

She whined at having to stop, letting go of Jonathan’s wrists and sitting up, watching over her shoulder as Steve lifted and spread Jonathan’s legs. Then he pressed his slicked-up cock to Jonathan’s hole, working his way inside with shallow thrusts. 

“Oh, god,” Jonathan groaned, giving Nancy a desperate look. “Sweetheart, please, I…”

Nancy put her hands back on his wrists, holding them down against the bed. "That better?" Jonathan nodded, so Nancy told him, “Love you so much, Jonathan." She lifted her hips and pressed them back down onto Jonathan’s cock as Steve fucked him. Steve’s belly brushed against Nancy’s ass as they moved together, pinning Jonathan down and taking him apart.

“Yeah, yes,” Jonathan said, squirming underneath Nancy. “Love you, too. Baby, just a little…”

Steve lifted Jonathan’s legs a little higher. “How’s that?”

“Gooood,” Jonathan groaned, letting Nancy kiss him again. He kissed Nancy back and strained against her hold on his wrists, and cried out, and then he was coming, breathing harshly and biting Nancy’s lip.

Nancy kept moving on him, trying to come before it got to be too much, but he twisted his wrists out of Nancy’s hold and put his hands on her hips, holding her still. “I’m done, I’m done,” he said.

“Here, Nance,” Steve tugged her until she was on her back next to Jonathan, and he kneeled next to the bed. Steve put his mouth on her, licking and sucking, pressing two fingers into her and it was so intense all of a sudden that Nancy had to grab onto Jonathan and clench her teeth to keep from yelling out. 

Jonathan turned toward her, holding her hand and kissing her neck and cupping her breast, rubbing his thumb across her nipple. Between the two of them, Nancy didn’t stand a chance of lasting much longer. She came and practically had to kick Steve to get him to stop. 

“Fuck,” he muttered, standing up and crawling onto the bed with them. Nancy moved over, making room for Steve between her and Jonathan, who had the thing of lube in his hand. 

Jonathan got a wet hand on Steve and stroked him as Nancy kissed him. She dragged her nails across his chest, letting him pull her close with an arm around her back.

Steve whimpered against her lips, before turning toward Jonathan and muttering against his shoulder, “Oh. Fuck, yes. That’s– C’mon, I’m– Yeah…” And then he cried out, holding Nancy close and coming as Jonathan worked him through it.

After a minute, Steve sighed happily, kissing Jonathan, and then Nancy. “I’m gonna sleep good after that,” he mumbled, as Jonathan wiped him off with a pair of boxers from the floor. 

“Let’s get under the covers,” Nancy said, crawling up to the head of the bed and slipping under them. Steve gestured for Jonathan to get in after her, and then he got up and turned out the light before coming back to bed, settling in on Jonathan’s other side. 

Nancy was almost asleep when Jonathan sighed and said, “The apartment feels too empty.”

“Just pretend she’s at work or something,” Steve told him.

When Jonathan didn't respond, Nancy turned to face Jonathan, taking one of his hands in hers and kissing it. "Did we help you feel better at all?"

"Yes," he told Nancy, pressing his forehead against hers. "A lot better, sweetheart. Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said, kissing Jonathan. Steve's hand reached over and settled on her arm, and their bed felt right, and full, and safe.


	5. Flight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: canon-typical violence, mention of guns, mention of blood.

Jonathan was glad he’d dropped his job at the photo lab the previous semester because the one day he spent away trying to help Charlie put him so far behind, it took him the whole rest of the week to catch up. He tried not to think about Charlie too much, but he had to pinch his own arm several times a day to keep from visiting her and checking in on how she was doing.

Will had visited him the night before, filling him in on Charlie’s progress. He wouldn’t give any more detail past, “Slow, but steady,” and Jonathan told himself to be grateful he was being told that much.

Jonathan wanted to tell himself that what he’d done wasn’t that bad, that he was trying to help, and desperate times called for desperate measures. Maybe all of that _was_ true, but Jonathan should have known better than to pull memories from Charlie that she didn’t purposefully share. It was the same shit the whole family had been trying to teach Jenny _not_ to do, and he’d gone and done it to his own daughter.

He tried not to think about what would happen if she couldn’t forgive him. She’d probably move out. Maybe never speak to him again. Avoid family functions where he was going to be. In a way, Jonathan would become _her_ Lonnie. 

_Shit_.

Hopefully she would see that it was a momentary slip-up, and not a pattern. Jonathan wouldn’t let it become a pattern. He was better than Lonnie. He had to be. His family deserved someone better. They deserved the best.

On Monday night, almost a week since Jonathan had brought Charlie to Springfield, he decided to call the house using the phone. Hop answered it, “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s Jonathan. I’m just checking in. How’s it going?”

“Fine,” he said. “Not that anyone around here tells me anything!” These last few words he said louder and obviously directed away from the phone and toward the other residents of the house. 

Amused, Jonathan asked, “What didn’t they tell you about now?”

“They’ve been taking Charlie to the high school football field in the middle of the night to practice teleporting,” he said with a scoff. “They’re _grounded_!”

“Wow,” Jonathan replied. “Um, sorry?”

“Here, talk to your mother,” Hop said, handing off the phone. 

“Jonathan?” she asked, her tone amused, and Jonathan could practically see her smiling indulgently at her husband.

“Hey, Mom,” he said. “Sounds like it’s been an exciting week.”

“Yeah, no kidding,” she said with a little laugh. “We got Jenny’s report card back this week.”

“Oh?” Jonathan asked. “How’s she doing?”

Joyce replied, “Pretty good. She’s right on track for where she should be in second grade, so _that’s_ a big relief. She’s getting so excited for her birthday next week.”

“Still having the party for her on Sunday?”

“That’s the plan,” Joyce told him. “Maybe you guys will take Charlie back to the city with you afterward?”

Sighing, Jonathan asked, “Is she wearing out her welcome with you guys?”

“No, no,” Joyce assured him. “Of course not.” Lowering her voice, Joyce added, “I just think she’s getting a little bored.”

“Do you think…” Jonathan sighed. “Would she want to talk to me? Or is she still mad?”

“I _think_ her anger has run its course,” Joyce assured him. “Do you want me to go ask if she wants to talk to you?”

“Yeah. Yes, please. Thanks, Mom.”

“Anytime, sweetie,” she replied, before setting down the phone. 

It took a few minutes, but eventually, it was Charlie’s voice on the other end of the line, saying, “Hey.”

“Hi,” Jonathan replied, telling himself not to screw it up. “I remembered you like talking better this way,” he told her, relieved when she gave a tiny snort of a laugh. 

“It’s a lot less creepy,” she told him, her tone pointed. 

Jonathan sighed. “Look, I am _so_ sorry about last week. I should have known better, and I won’t do it again.”

“I know,” she said, with a soft voice. “You’ve been ashamed all week. I could tell.”

“I don’t know if I should be proud of you for that,” he told her honestly, making her laugh again. “Anyway, what’s this about letting the twins take you out for teleporting lessons?”

“The backyard was too small,” she said, in a tone that was eerily like El’s no-nonsense approach to everything. “I do think I’m getting a better handle on how to do it safely. It feels better, more right, doing it their way, rather than how I did it before.”

Jonathan smiled. “That’s great.” Picking at the frayed hem of his jeans, Jonathan asked, “Still planning on coming back next Sunday?”

“Actually, I might have Jim drive me up tomorrow,” she said. “If I don’t make my shift on Wednesday, I’m gonna get fired.”

“Okay, sure,” Jonathan told her. “Whenever you’re ready is totally cool with me. With us.”

“Okay,” Charlie repeated. “I’ll, um, let you know.”

“Great.”

“Great.”

~*~

Spending a week at the house in Springfield without Jonathan or the others was an odd experience for Charlie. She kept expecting to feel like an outsider, looking in on the family, but it kept not happening. Joyce, especially, seemed to be invested in bringing Charlie into all the dinner time discussions. 

That was another thing Charlie wasn’t used to. Family dinners. With her other parents, family meals only really happened during special occasions. Even when Charlie was still living with them, there’d be food set aside for her to heat up, but her parents didn’t expect her to sit with them to eat it. Not the way Joyce and Hop expected their kids to eat with them. 

Charlie found herself enjoying the practice more than she thought she would. It took a lot of mental energy for her to show up and interact with everyone, but in the end, the calm feeling she got after being seen and talked with and appreciated made the whole thing worth it. 

Driving back to Chicago with Jim was another experience altogether. For a guy as excitable as he could be, Jim was pretty calm through the majority of the drive. He said things like, “So, the kids tell me you’re into music. Why don’t you find a radio station you like?”

Charlie shrugged and said, “Okay,” flipping through the stations until she caught the tail-end of a bluesy folk song she could tell Hop recognized. 

She left the radio there, and as the next song started, Jim said, “Good choice!”

They drove for a few minutes, just listening to the radio, before he said, “Jonathan is a good man.”

“I know,” she replied, not as angry with Jonathan as she had been the week before.

“It’s just…” He sighed, looking out the windshield. “Sometimes us dads get a little overprotective. Make mistakes. Do things we wish we could take back.”

“I don’t need him to be my dad,” Charlie told him, picking at one of the rivets in her jacket. “I’m older than him, for chrissakes.”

Jim laughed. “Yeah, you’re right. I’m just…” He shook his head. “All I’m saying is that I’m sure he had good intentions. And maybe take that into account?”

Charlie fell silent as she thought about that. Then she told Jim, “I’ve never liked it when people think they know what I need better than I do.”

“Understandable,” Jim said, giving Charlie a quick glance. “Maybe if you tell Jonathan exactly what it was you didn’t like, he’ll have a better chance of not repeating the mistake.”

“He knows what he did,” Charlie assured him. 

Jim shrugged. “Maybe you’re right. He’s sort of a mind reader. But,” he turned and gave Charlie a sad-looking smile. “My ex-wife said that a lot. ‘You know what you did, Jim.’ Except I _never_ could figure it out. Drove me up the wall.”

“I didn’t know you were married before,” she said.

“Oh, yeah,” he replied with a nod. “For almost ten years.”

“What happened?”

“We, uh,” he said, pausing to take a breath. Charlie realized suddenly that it was grief that made him pause. Before she could take back her question, Jim finished his thought, “We had a daughter who died. Leukemia. Things kind of… fell apart after that."

Charlie felt awkward and dumb for asking. Eventually, she made herself say, "I'm sorry."

He nodded and said, "Anyway. What I'm trying to say is that even if you think he knows what he did wrong, saying it out loud can't hurt."

The thought of trying to say her thoughts out loud was always daunting, so Charlie scoffed. 

"Hey, none of that," Jim told her with a mischievous smile that made Charlie _almost_ laugh. She smiled back anyway.

They spent most of the rest of the drive listening to the radio. When the folk music station faded out, Charlie found one of the Chicago stations she sometimes liked. It tended to play more recent music, without too much pop. Jim made a long-suffering noise, but didn't ask her to change it.

The Chicago traffic was kind of hellish, but eventually they made it to the apartment. Looking out at the building, Jim asked, "Want me to circle the block a few times? Just in case you feel like leaving again?"

"No," she said, scoffing at him. "I'll be fine. None of them are here right now, anyway."

"Alright," he said, and Charlie couldn't quite figure out if he didn't believe she was fine, or didn't believe she could tell everyone was gone from the apartment. Given his kids, Charlie thought the former was probably the most likely.

Grabbing her bag from the floor of the truck, Charlie said, "Thanks for the ride."

"Hey, any time, kid," he replied, watching as she hopped out of the truck and gave him one last wave. He didn't pull away until Charlie got through the outer door of the building, and she was pretty sure he circled the block once before heading back toward Springfield. 

She let herself into the apartment and it was dark, but she noticed the way it smelled familiar. Like home. Mary Ann's house had always smelled a little different whenever she had come back to it after a few days away. Charlie wondered if that was the reason she'd never felt quite at home there. Mary Ann's had been a place to live. _This_ was home.

Charlie wasn't so sure she liked that realization. 

There was a piece of paper on the kitchen counter, and when Charlie got closer, she realized it was addressed to her in Nancy's neat handwriting. 

_Charlie,_

_I had to go back to campus to fix an issue with my article for tomorrow's paper. Jonathan is refusing to let me go by myself, so he's with me. We should be back by 8 (I hope). Steve's at work as usual. See you soon!_

– _Nancy_

_P.S. A call to Robin wouldn't hurt. The silent treatment from you is making her more ~~annoying~~ than usual._

Underneath the crossed-out "annoying" was the word "worried" in Jonathan's handwriting.

Shit. She supposed it was stupid to keep avoiding Robin like she had been. Robin hadn't done anything wrong. She didn't deserve the way Charlie was treating her. With a sigh, Charlie picked up the phone from the kitchen wall and dialed Robin's apartment. It rang a few times and then the answering machine picked up. With Robin's weird work schedule, that wasn't unusual. After the beep, Charlie said, "Hey. I'm back in town and doing better and everything. Let me know if you want to get together." Then, not knowing what else to say, Charlie hung up. 

Shit, she probably should have apologized or something. Maybe she could do that after Robin called her back. 

Charlie sighed and turned around to open the fridge. She hadn't been around to go grocery shopping that week, and apparently no one else had gone either. The shelves were pretty empty, because god forbid anyone else actually remember to buy groceries. There was a pizza box, and when Charlie opened it, the pizza inside didn't look too dried out or anything. It probably wasn't very old. 

She took the whole box out of the fridge and brought it with her to her room. There with the door closed, Charlie felt even _more_ at home. She kicked off her shoes and hit play on her boombox, pleased when the tape inside turned out to be _Hysteria_. Charlie collapsed onto her bed and started eating the cold pizza, shuffling through the magazines on her nightstand until she found one she wanted to look at. 

Halfway through her second piece of pizza, Charlie noticed there were goosebumps on the back of her neck and running down her arms. But, why?

She set the pizza back in the box and stood up, going over to the boombox and pausing the tape. Nothing sounded out of the ordinary. Closing her eyes, Charlie tried to figure out if it was something else she was sensing. Nothing seemed strange. 

Except, when she opened her eyes, both her overhead light and her desk lamp flickered. Charlie felt her heart leap up into her throat, thundering in her ears.

This was stupid. It was just a glitch in the power. Nothing to–

The lights flickered again, for a good three or four seconds before they went completely out, plunging the room into darkness. 

Outside her door, Charlie heard something slip and tumble down onto the hardwood floor. It sounded big, and Charlie suddenly knew what was out there.

_Jonathan!_ she cried out, reaching for and finding him as she backed away from her door. The window opened out onto a fire escape, but her fingers were trembling too hard to get the lock unlatched. _Help!_

Jonathan showed her how to break the window, and Charlie was just about to do it when she realized that she wasn't wearing shoes. She couldn't step on broken glass without shoes! She grabbed her boots from the floor by feel, and had just shoved them on her feet when there was a deafening cracking of wood and a whoosh of air that followed.

The door was open.

The hallway was too dark to see what made the floorboards creak as its weight shifted. 

_Push it_! Jonathan said in Charlie's mind, offering her some of his strength. _Get out of there!_

Charlie was too scared to move, too scared to fight. Just like before, all she could think about was getting _away_. 

She pictured Jonathan in her mind, pulled on the strength he was sharing with her, and _folded_ the space between here and there, letting that fold sweep her up and out. 

_Away_.

~*~

"You really didn't have to come with me," Nancy told Jonathan as they took the stairs down from the train platform to the sidewalk below. "It's not even that late yet."

Settling his bag on his shoulder, Jonathan reached for Nancy, taking her hand in his. "I just wanted to spend some time with you," he said. "Tuesdays and Thursdays are kind of _our_ evenings."

Nancy smiled at him, but poked his side a little and asked, "Are you sure you aren't just avoiding being alone in the apartment with Charlie?"

He scoffed and looked away from her, but a few steps later, he admitted, "Maybe."

With a little laugh, Nancy pulled Jonathan closer and wrapped herself around his arm. "I'm sure this will all blow over soon. I mean, it's obvious how sorry you are."

"Yeah," he said, kind of shaking his head like he didn't quite believe it. 

Then he suddenly stopped short, staring wide-eyed down the street. Nancy followed his line of sight, and noticed the way the street lamps on the same block as their building flickered.

"No," Nancy breathed, sharing a quick glance with Jonathan before they both started running toward home. "Is she there? Is she in danger?"

"Yeah," he replied, his rapid breath foggy in the cold night air. 

They got to an intersection with a side street and tried to cross, but a van turned and stopped right in front of them, the back door sliding open, several figures in ski masks inside. By reflex, Nancy pulled Jonathan down the side street and away from the van, urging him to run and then pulling her gun out of her purse. The van's tires squealed and it pulled up alongside them. 

Nancy clicked the safety off her gun.

Before she could shoot, Jonathan yelled and the van tipped over, skidding to a halt half a block down. 

Jonathan staggered, and Nancy reversed course, going back to him and getting between him and the two masked figures behind him. "Stop right there!" she shouted at them.

One of the figures stopped, but the other didn't. Nancy pulled her trigger, and he dropped, crumpling to the ground with a wound in the center of his chest. 

Hearing quick footsteps from behind her, Nancy saw another masked figure running toward them. She pivoted and shot him without warning before turning back to the one that was left. 

She felt more than saw Jonathan fall to his knees behind her.

"Well?" she asked the one masked figure still standing.

He put up his hands and stepped back. 

Splitting her focus between the masked man and the crashed van, Nancy asked, "Honey, can you walk?"

"Maybe," he said, his voice thick and wet – with blood, she assumed. 

She reached back for him with her left hand, worried when the hand he put in hers was colder than she expected.

"What's going on?" she hissed at him, putting his arm over her shoulders and taking some of his weight, while still trying to keep her eyes on the possible threats.

"Charlie," he said, his steps shuffling as Nancy pulled him along with her, getting them the hell out of there.

"What about Charlie?" Nancy asked, reaching the next intersection over. "Do we need to go to her?"

"She's n-n-not there," Jonathan said, turning around and pointing at someone. “Don’t!”

Nancy looked back, and saw the masked man who'd backed off earlier raising a gun. 

Before she could react, Jonathan made a gesture with his hand and the man collapsed.

Jonathan swayed against her. 

“C’mon,” she said, pulling him closer. “We gotta get out of here.”

She put the safety on her gun and shoved it into her coat pocket. With both hands free, she was better able to help Jonathan move. They made it to Clark street, where there was more traffic, and Nancy turned toward the 24-hour diner where she and Steve usually had Saturday brunch. 

A glance over at Jonathan made Nancy realize there was no way they were going undetected while he looked like that. She hastily pulled off her scarf and helped Jonathan wrap it around his neck and the bloody bottom half of his face. Noting the dark veins around his eyes and over his cheeks, she pulled his hat down farther too.

“In here,” she said, pulling him with her into the diner and waving to the waitress behind the counter as she pulled him toward one of the booths near the back. “What just happened?”

“There was a demogorgon,” he said, his voice muffled by the scarf. "At the apartment. Charlie 'ported away from it. T-took a lot of strength from me."

"Where did she go?" Nancy asked him.

Shaking his head, he said, "I d-don't know. _Far_. I can't f-find her."

"She drained you pretty bad, though," Nancy said, reaching across the table to put her hand on his. "We should get you something to eat. What do you want?"

He shook his head, making a disgusted groan. "No, Nance. I can't… I…"

"Well, hello, Miss Nancy," said the waitress as she came out from behind the counter. "We don't usually see you here in the evening!" She gave Jonathan a concerned look. "Who's this?"

"Hi, Tracy. This is Jonathan." Knowing Tracy thought Steve was her only fiance, Nancy added, "Steve's roommate." 

Jonathan waved weakly.

Nancy gave Tracy an apologetic smile. "Could we get him a 7-up, maybe? Some soup crackers?"

When Nancy gave him a questioning look, Jonathan nodded and closed his eyes.

"Sure, I can do that," Tracy said, still looking a little concerned. "Can I get you anything?"

"Coffee," Nancy told her. "Oh, and change for the phone, if you wouldn't mind."

"I got some quarters," Jonathan said from behind his scarf, taking his hand out of his pocket and dropping five or six of them onto the table.

Giving Tracy another apologetic smile, Nancy said, "Never mind!"

With a little laugh, Tracy shook her head and left.

As Nancy gathered up the quarters, Jonathan asked, "Who are you calling?"

"Robin," she told him. Nodding toward the bathrooms behind him, she said, "You should wash your face. You look like hell."

" _Thanks_ , sweetheart," he said dryly, which Nancy knew was a good sign. 

Nancy went to the payphone near the bathrooms and called Robin's apartment, hoping like hell she was home. The call went to the answering machine and Nancy couldn't help but give it a frustrated growl. After the beep, she said, "Robin, if you're there, I need you to pick up. It's an emergency, okay? Someth–"

"I'm here!" Robin cried as she picked up. "I'm here. I just got in. What's going on?"

Temporarily at a loss for words, Nancy said, " _Everything_."

"Shit."

"Yeah," Nancy said in agreement. "Can you get Steve from work? Bring him to our Saturday breakfast spot. He'll know where we are."

Robin said, "Sure. Yeah, I can do that. You're sure you're okay?"

Nancy held her breath, not sure whether or not to tell Robin about what had happened to Charlie. No, she needed to drive safely, not be distracted. "Yeah. We're all okay. Just get here soon, okay? I'll call ahead so Steve knows you're coming."

"Okay, Nancy. Stay safe."

"You too."

After hanging up with Robin, Nancy put another quarter in the phone and dialed La Grâce. It took a few minutes to get Steve on the phone, but the words "fiancée" and "emergency" tended to work pretty well.

"What's going on?" Steve asked. 

Nancy sighed, waving Jonathan over when he stepped out of the bathroom. "Robin's coming to get you now. Some guys tried to grab Jonathan."

"What? When?" Steve demanded. "Is he okay?"

"Yeah. He's right here," Nancy said, handing the phone to Jonathan and mouthing, "Steve," so he would know what to expect.

"Hey, baby," Jonathan said, leaning against the wall next to the phone. "Yeah, I'm alright. Just tired." He paused for a few seconds before saying, "I don't know. Unmarked van. Masks. But…" Jonathan looked up at Nancy. "I'm more worried about Charlie. There was a demogorgon in the apartment." He was about to say more, but then he paused as Steve said something. "No, no. She 'ported away from it. I just don't know where." 

After nodding a few times, Jonathan said, "I love you, too. Here's Nance." Then he handed the phone back to her. 

“Hey,” she said, holding the phone with one hand and Jonathan’s hand with the other. 

“I didn’t want to freak him out,” Steve said, “but guys in masks _and_ a demogorgon at the same time? They’ve got to be connected, right?”

“Yeah, I think so too,” Nancy told him. “We’ll talk more when you get here.”

“Okay. Stay safe. If you have to run again? What’s plan B?”

After a second of thought, Nancy said, “Meet on your campus. That cafe where you and Jonathan have lunch all the time. Eight am.”

“Got it. Love you, babe.”

“You too, Steve. See you soon.”

“Bye.”

As she hung up the phone, Nancy checked over Jonathan again. He was still too pale, so she told him, “Go sit down, okay? I just have a couple more calls to make.”

“Who?”

“Murray,” she said, getting a reluctant nod from Jonathan, “and Joe Coombs.”

“Joe? Why?”

“I want him to make sure Charlie isn’t snowed in up at our old cabin,” she told him, counting the quarters left in her pocket. “Shit. I’m gonna need a few more.”

“Call Joe first,” Jonathan said, pushing away from the wall. “We’ll call Murray when the waitress can make us some change.”

Nancy nodded. As a plan, it made sense. She shooed him away, back toward the table where Tracy was delivering their order, and then turned back to the phone. She didn’t remember Joe’s number off the top of her head, but she had it in the notebook in her purse. 

When he picked up, Nancy said, “Hey, Joe. It’s Nancy Wheeler.”

“Nancy!” he cried, his tone delighted. “Wow, it’s been a minute, hasn’t it? I got your Christmas card!”

“I’m glad,” she told him, unable to keep the smile off her face. “Sorry to call out of the blue and ask for a favor, but I need a favor. It’s an emergency.”

“Of course,” he replied. “What do you need?”

“Are you able to get to my old place in Cedarville? I just… Charlie might have gone there, and I want to make sure she’s not caught out in the snow and freezing to death.”

Joe pauses for a second before saying, “My god. Okay. Yeah, I’ll get on up there right away. Luckily the snow line is pretty high this year. It’s been a mild winter.”

“Yeah, lucky,” Nancy said with a sigh. “Hey, do you have Jonathan’s parents’ phone number?”

“If I do,” he said, “I’ve lost it. Why don’t you give it to me again?”

Nancy gave him the number, and after he repeated it back, she said, “Call them after you get back home. We’ve had to go to ground a bit here.”

“Everything okay?”

“Not really,” she admitted. “But we’re hanging in there. I’ll talk to you soon.”

“Okay, Nancy. Soon.”

“Thanks, Joe. Bye.”

With that, Nancy hung up the phone again and went back to the table. She slid in the booth next to Jonathan, so she could see the door, and pulled her coffee cup closer from across the table.

“I hate having to wait while all this shit is going on,” she said.

Jonathan put a hand on her knee. “I know, sweetheart. I know.”

~*~

After Steve hung up the phone, he realized he had about ten minutes to pawn his tables off on the other servers before he had to leave. Somehow, he didn’t think, “My fiancée and our boyfriend were attacked and our twenty-two year old daughter is missing,” would work out so well. On the other hand, everyone knew that Charlie had been "sick" for the past week. And they knew that she was his "cousin." Maybe he could say that she was in the hospital?

No, then some of them would want to visit her and he didn't know enough about medical shit to be able to B.S. his way through giving them some reason why they couldn't. 

When Sullivan came up to him and asked, "What is it?" Steve said the first thing that popped into his head.

"Someone broke into my apartment."

"That's horrible," Sullivan said. "Did they take anything?"

"I don't know. The cops want me to come check it out. Give them a list of everything." He gave Sullivan a hopeful look.

He sighed and said, "Yeah, you should go. Give me a run down on your tables."

After that was done, Steve grabbed his coat and went out front. He found Robin's car parked up the block right away. A little paranoid about the masked men that Nancy and Jonathan had run into, Steve double checked that it was Robin (and _only_ Robin) in the car before he got in.

"Let's go," he said, buckling his seat belt. 

Robin gave Steve a brave sort of nod. "Nancy said bring you to your Saturday breakfast spot. She said you'd know where that was."

"It's that place we met you and Charlie two weeks ago," Steve told her. "Kind of where Clark and Sheffield meet."

"Got it," she said, pulling out into traffic and heading in that direction. 

Steve could tell that she was tense and worried, so he told her, "Everything's going to be fine. We'll figure it out."

"Uh-huh," she replied, not convinced at all. It probably didn't help that Steve was having a hard time being optimistic too.

As they got close on Clark, Steve noticed that one of the side streets was blocked off with cop cars and an ambulance, all of them with their lights flashing. "Shit."

"Well, I can tell where Nancy and Jonathan _were_ ," Robin said, which made Steve chuckle a little bit.

Shaking his head, he told Robin, "Those two are capable of _so much_ destruction. It's kind of impressive."

"It's a total turn-on for you, isn't it?" She asked, smiling as she reached over and pushed his shoulder. "You freak."

Steve chuckled and shook his head, but he didn't exactly _deny_ it either. Pointing, he said, "That's the place. Let's park around here somewhere."

After they parked, Steve led the way back to the cafe, asking Robin, “Keep your eyes up, huh?”

“Like I’d be doing anything else,” she replied with a friendly scoff. 

It didn’t take long to get to the cafe, and Steve paused outside, looking in to make sure everything looked normal. When he didn’t see anything out of the ordinary, he pushed through the door and headed for where he saw Nancy and Jonathan sitting near the back. 

Nancy stood up as he approached, greeting Steve with a hug and a fierce kiss. Then she nudged him toward the seat next to Jonathan while she hugged Robin. 

“How’re you doing, babe?” Steve asked Jonathan softly, squeezing his hand under the table.

“Better than half an hour ago,” he said, picking up a clear soda with his free hand and sipping it through the straw. “Charlie almost wiped me out.”

“Wait, what’s going on with Charlie?” Robin asked, keeping her voice low as well. “I thought she’d be here.”

Between the two of them, Nancy and Jonathan explained what had happened. When they were done, Steve asked, “Have you called the house? Maybe she went there.”

“No, but I called Joe Coombs, just in case she went back there,” Nancy told him. Pointing toward the phone in the back, she said, “Wanna try the house?”

“Sure.”

Steve figured for the long-distance call he might as well call collect, except no one answered. He looked at his watch, and saw that it was only about half past nine. _Someone_ should have been there to answer. 

_Fuck_.

He returned to the table just as their normal Saturday waitress came by. “Hey, Tracy. Can I get a Coke?” he asked her, slumping back down into the seat next to Jonathan.

“Sure thing, sweetie,” she said, giving him a little wink. He smiled and gave her a little wave as she left like he always did, not wanting her to know how fucked everything was. 

“No one answered at the house,” he told the others. Looking over at Jonathan he asked, “Are you all tapped out, or d’you think you could talk to El?”

“I can try,” he said, lowering his head onto his arms and going still for a moment. 

While he did that, Steve looked over at Nancy and Robin, who appeared to be having a silent conversation. Nancy seemed in favor of doing something, while Robin seemed opposed. Steve waved at them and raised an eyebrow, but before anyone could explain, Jonathan lifted his head. 

He told everyone, “They were attacked tonight too. Demogorgon working with some sort of strike team. Everyone’s okay. The twins pulled them into the Upside Down long enough to get away.” Jonathan sighed. “They’re pretty rough, waiting for Hop to meet them. But they’re together.”

“It was a coordinated effort,” Robin said, sitting back in the booth and covering her face with her hands. “Shit.”

“Why now?” Nancy asked. “It’s been over a year of _nothing_ , and now this?”

“What about everyone in Hawkins?” Steve asked. “I mean, there aren’t any of…” he pointed to Jonathan as a stand-in for all the people they knew with powers, “there anymore, but there’s our families.”

“I’ll call Mike,” Nancy said. “Oh, and you got any quarters? I want to call Murray too, and there’s no way he’s going to accept a collect call.”

Steve pulled all the change from his pocket and gave it to her. After she left, Steve couldn’t help himself, he folded his hand into Jonathan’s under the table. Leaning toward Jonathan, he asked in a low voice, “How close was it this time?”

Jonathan raised his eyebrows, his eyes barely open, exhausted. “What?”

“How close to losing you guys again?” Steve asked. “How much should I be freaking out?”

“Not that close,” Jonathan insisted, squeezing Steve’s hand. “And _none_. I need you keeping watch for me, baby. I’m so tired…”

“Okay,” Steve said with a determined nod. “Okay. Put your head down for a few minutes or something. I’m on it.”

Steve got halfway through his Coke and Robin finished her tea before Nancy came back to the table. “Mike’s looking into the situation in Hawkins,” she told them. “We’re meeting Murray in half an hour. We should get going, in case we have to ditch a tail or anything.”

“Good thinking,” Robin told her. For the millionth time, Steve thanked his lucky stars for having such smart people in his life. 

After Nancy settled the bill with Tracy, Steve helped get Jonathan to his feet. 

They got to Robin’s car, and they drove in circles for a while, just to make sure they didn’t have anyone following. Steve sat in the back seat with Jonathan, letting him rest his head in Steve’s lap. He petted Jonathan’s hair and watched the street outside the windshield. 

They met Murray in an empty library parking lot, and followed him through another series of circles around the city, until finally they arrived at Murray’s place. It was on the outskirts of one of the western suburbs and looked like a warehouse. Except the shelves in the warehouse were mostly empty and Murray led them to a set of stairs going downward underground. 

At the bottom of the stairs was a door with four or five locks on it. Murray undid these, and then showed them in, saying, “Mi casa es su casa!”

“Wow,” said Nancy as they went into something that Steve could only classify as some sort of fallout shelter. “This place is worse than your last one.”

“Maybe so,” he said. “But its location is top secret, so here we are.”

Steve asked Murray, “Is there somewhere Jonathan can lay down?”

“Is there?” Nancy asked too. “He usually needs to sleep this off.”

Murray gave Jonathan an assessing look, and then nodded. “I do have a guest room,” he said, pointing to a closed door. “You three should take it.” He smiled at Robin. “Miss FBI can have the couch.”

Nodding and saying, “Thanks,” Steve helped Jonathan through the door and set him down on the bed. Nancy and Robin stayed out in the main room of the bunker, likely still talking through plans and strategies for how to deal with this shit. Steve knew his efforts were better spent taking care of Jonathan.

“Thanks, baby,” Jonathan said with a sigh, laying back and letting Steve take his boots and coat. 

“You’re welcome,” Steve replied, taking off his own shoes and coat, along with his work apron and shirt, before crawling into the bed with Jonathan. As they got settled in, Jonathan rolled closer and let Steve hold him tight. “We’re all together here,” Steve told him, brushing his fingers through Jonathan’s hair. “You and me and Nancy. Everything’s gonna be okay.” He didn't mention Charlie being missing, because he knew it wouldn't help.

“Mm-hm,” Jonathan replied, already falling asleep.


	6. Reunion

A scream startled Jonathan awake, and he was still too fuzzy and depleted to be able to tell what was going on in the dark. Beside him, Nancy said, "Shit!" and turned on a lamp next to the bed. The sudden brightness blinded him and made his head ache, but his ears still worked.

The scream happened again, a little less terrified and more confused this time.

"Charlie?" Nancy asked, throwing off the covers and scrambling out of bed. "Charlie, it's okay! You're with us! You're safe!"

Steve got out of bed too, and Jonathan dragged himself up until he was sitting. At the end of the bed, Charlie and Nancy were crouched together, with Steve joining them. Charlie had blood dripping down from both of her nostrils and her eyes were wide and bloodshot. Jonathan crawled to the end of the bed, offering Charlie his hand. For a second, he thought she wasn't going to take it, but then she did.

"Where are we?" Charlie asked, squeezing Jonathan's hand tightly. He could feel both terror and relief through the connection, and he tried his best to think calming thoughts in her direction.

_Safe_ , Jonathan said, too tired to say the word out loud.

"We're at Murray's place," Nancy told Charlie, her hands on Charlie’s face, trying to get her to focus. "Whatever you've been through, it's over now."

"There was… in the apartment…" Charlie said, looking over at Jonathan.

Nodding, he told her, "I know. You got away." He squeezed her hand again. "Where did you go?"

Frowning at Jonathan, Charlie said, "I was just… it was _there_. So I came _here_. That's it."

The door to the room burst open, Robin there, wide eyed and with her gun in hand. Murray was three steps behind her with a shotgun. "What happened?" Robin asked.

"It's okay," Steve assured them, waving them off. "It's just Charlie. She's back."

Jonathan felt Robin’s confused mix of emotions when she saw Charlie, but her sigh was mostly one of relief. "Thank god."

"How did you all get _here_?" Charlie asked, looking around at everyone. "So fast, I mean. How did you get here so fast? You were _just_ out on the street. I saw you," she said to Jonathan. 

Jonathan shared a look with Nancy, and then Nancy said, "The attack was _hours_ ago. It's almost morning."

"But…" Charlie said before grabbing Steve's wrist and looking at his watch. "Shit. I must have done it wrong."

Steve winced and took his wrist back. "How wrong are we talking here? Another Cedarville?"

"No," Charlie shook her head vehemently. And Jonathan thought she might have been right. The atmosphere here didn't feel weird the way it had back in Cedarville when temporal shock waves were periodically sending people to the past. 

Then Charlie insisted, "No, I did it _right_. I think I _aimed_ wrong." She squeezed Jonathan's hand again and looked up at him. "I was trying to get to you. To get someplace safe."

"When you pulled," Jonathan told her, "we were under attack, too. There was a van with, what?" He looked to Nancy for confirmation. "Five? Six guys?"

"Four or five," she said. "We took out three, and there was at least a driver in the van when you pushed it over."

Nodding at Nancy's assessment, Jonathan said, "Maybe you went to the next safe place _and time_ you could see."

Shaking her head, Charlie said, "Fuck you, I can't see the future."

"It's all space-time," Nancy said, and Jonathan was reminded of all those nights in Cedarville that she spent reading the books Mike and Will had sent to her. "It shouldn't be possible to fold space and teleport without the energy equivalent of a thousand nuclear power plants. And yet you do it."

Maybe it was just Jonathan hearing things while still exhausted out of his mind, but he could have sworn the tone in Nancy's voice was more than a little proud.

Still, Charlie let go of Jonathan and dropped her head down into her hands. "This is too fucking much. I need a drink."

_Do you really, though?_ Jonathan said to her. _Or do you just need help calming down?_

Charlie looked up and narrowed her eyes at him, but there was no anger to go along with her expression, only weariness and fear. 

Murray started to say, "I have–" but Jonathan and Nancy both cut him off.

"No!"

While Murray was busy being taken aback by their sudden refusal, Nancy asked him, "What about some tea? Or, it's almost morning. Maybe some coffee is in order?"

"Sure. We can do that," Murray said, turning and heading out of the room. Everyone else followed him, except for Jonathan, who laid back down on the bed and closed his eyes.

A minute later, Steve came back for him. "Are you okay, babe?" he asked, leaning over the bed.

Jonathan opened his eyes and looked up at Steve. That's when he remembered. "I was supposed to take a midterm today."

Steve smiled and hid a laugh against his shoulder. "What are the chances that your professor will take 'had to fight off kidnappers' as an excuse?"

"Not good," Jonathan replied, tugging on Steve's arm until he laid back down with Jonathan. "To be honest, it's the 'I helped my daughter time-travel' that's got me too tired to get out of bed."

Giving him a soft sort of look, Steve kissed Jonathan and then asked, "How can I help?"

With a sigh, Jonathan said, "Maybe just help me get up on my feet? I really gotta pee."

Steve gave a surprised laugh, but nodded and said, "Alright. Let's go."

~*~

Charlie had a vague idea of who Murray was before she teleported into his underground _lair_ , but only from being at Joyce and Jim's wedding a month earlier. She'd managed to spend that whole event exchanging exactly zero words with him. 

Today she wasn't so lucky.

“So, it’s Miss Everly, right?” Murray asked, sitting down across the table from her and sliding a fresh mug of coffee in her direction. “Not _Byers_?”

“It’s Everly,” she told him, taking the coffee and reading him as best she could while still exhausted from the night before.

Mostly she just read curiosity from him. It was an _overbearing_ curiosity, to be sure, but it didn’t come with anything malicious. At least, not that she could sense. With a long-suffering sigh, she said, “Just… ask what you’re going to ask. Jesus.”

Blinking at her a few times, Murray grinned. Then he asked, “When you were near the monster, was there any indication anyone was controlling it somehow?”

“Sorry, I didn’t stop to therapize it,” she replied, blowing on the coffee and then taking a sip. “I was too busy running for my life.”

“I just don’t understand _how_ anyone would work in cahoots with not just one of these monsters, but at least two.”

“Three, if you count the one we got last week,” Steve said, sitting down next to Charlie at the table. “Jonathan says the others will be here soon, and not to wake him up when they get here.”

“He’s that exhausted?” Charlie asked him, thinking that yeah she was kind of tired too, but not to that degree. “Wait, did I do that to him?”

“No,” Steve told her, lying. “Of course not!”

“Uh-huh.”

Murray slid a yellow legal pad onto the table between them, drawing on it as he spoke. “At least three monsters, two different strike teams, all working in concert. I hate to say it, but this seems almost–”

“Military,” Nancy said for him, standing beside the table with her arms crossed. “But which military? It was the Russians who took one, and maybe more, of these monsters out of the Upside Down using their base under Starcourt.”

“Ah,” Murray replied, delighted by the conversation in a way Charlie didn’t want to delve into too deeply. “But it was the US military who had a gate open for a full year. Who knows how many specimens they might have retrieved during that time? You said these monsters are common over there, correct?”

Charlie shivered. Will had told her a little bit about the Upside Down, and honestly? Charlie hoped she would never have to visit that place. It sounded like more of the nightmare-fuel shit she’d been running from for the past four years. 

“We know there was one hunting in Springfield in ‘85,” Nancy told him. “El and Will had to avoid it while they were running from Nine.”

“But more people didn’t go missing,” Steve said. “That whole year it was open, another demogorgon didn’t show up in Hawkins. Wouldn’t they be, like _drawn_ to the gate or something? Fresh meat?”

Charlie shivered again and said, “Maybe they did come, but the scientists guarding the gate caught them before they could attack anyone.”

“Shit, I bet they did,” Steve said, putting a hand over his eyes. “The Russian gate was only open for a few days. So how the hell did they _know_ how to catch and keep a demogorgon? They didn’t have enough time to trial and error that shit.”

Nancy nodded at him. “Unless Owens’ team did it first, and the information leaked.”

“That Owens guy,” Charlie said, trying to remember what she could about him. “He’s military?”

“More like a spook scientist,” Murray replied. “CIA, I’m fairly certain.”

“Why would his guys attack us with demogorgon monsters?” Charlie asked the others. “Aren’t the twins working for him?”

Nancy took a sharp breath before saying, "It might be a case of the right hand stealing from the left. Like, a rogue operation run by someone outside Owens' control."

Steve sighed. "If it is the US government, we're fucked. There's no way we can hide from them and still have normal lives."

"You'd have to go completely off the grid," Murray said, pointing around. "Like I have."

Charlie's breath felt tight in her chest. "I should have stayed in Logan. The monster wouldn't have found me if I'd just stayed there."

"Maybe not," Nancy said, "but whoever's after us likely knew about Jonathan because Execugen knew about him. This was going to happen whether or not you were here."

Oddly, the no-nonsense tone in Nancy's voice helped. Still, Charlie couldn't help but ask, "Why are they after Jonathan?"

" _That's_ exactly what we need to find out," Murray said, writing the letter "J" in the middle of his incomprehensible drawing and circling it.

A rhythmic knock at the door drew Murray's attention and he dropped his pen onto the legal pad and jumped up from the table. After checking a monitor near the door, he undid all the locks and let the visitors in.

Joyce was first through the door, hurrying forward when she saw them. She reached Nancy first, saying, "Oh, it's good to see you guys," and hugging her tightly. El and Will followed through the door next, while Jim was last, Jenny in his arms, her head resting on his shoulder. 

Charlie got up and let Joyce hug her, taking more comfort in the hug than she thought she would. After Jim put Jenny in the guest room with Jonathan, he came back as Nancy was asking, "So, what exactly happened to you guys last night? I only got a summary from Jonathan."

"I was still on the road when it happened," Jim said, looking over to El, who nodded and took the seat Steve offered her. 

"Mom was getting Jenny ready for bed. Will was the one who noticed something was wrong," she looked to Will as he sat down next to her. 

"It was goosebumps on the back of my neck," Will said, putting his hand back there. "Kind of like I used to get because of the Mind Flayer, but more… _feral_. It was–" He shivered, then reached over for El, who put her hand in his like she didn't even have to think about it. "The monster was invisible, outside and watching us. Biding its time. Waiting for something."

"For what?" Nancy asked him, but Will shrugged.

"I didn't know at the time. We grabbed the go bag Dad keeps packed and we were about to leave, but that's when we all heard it." He licked his lips nervously and turned to El.

With a nod, El said, "We heard someone call the demogorgon. They called and helped it build a portal into the house. We tried to run, but they cut the electricity, so our extra power device went down. And they had so many soldiers around. It was either kill them all, or step over into the Upside Down."

"That's what we did," Will continued. "We 'ported a few times over there to get farther away faster, and then came back Rightside Up at the emergency meeting place."

"Wait," Charlie said.. Go bag? Emergency meeting place? "You guys had this evacuation all planned out, didn't you?"

"I insisted," Jim told her. "I figured something like this would happen eventually, especially after that scare we had over the summer." When Nancy gave him a questioning look, he shook his head. "We'll get to that later. Last night, when I saw the neighborhood blocked off with a checkpoint, I went to the meeting place. We caught a couple hours sleep in a motel halfway here, then drove the rest of the way this morning."

"How come you didn't tell me the plan?" Charlie asked them. "What if this had happened the night before last? I wouldn't have known what to do."

"We came up with the plan so long ago, sweetie," Joyce said, squeezing her hand. "It wasn't on our minds anymore. We forgot you might need to know it."

Charlie wasn't sure Joyce's explanation did anything to quell her fears.

Murray waved off Charlie's indignance, instead asking, "Did you have any indications who your attackers were affiliated with?"

"They had the local county sheriff's office working for them at the checkpoint," Jim said, scratching his fingers through his beard. "If they weren't Feds, they would have to pull a really great con to get cooperation from local LEOs like that."

“What do we think, then?” Murray asked him. “Special Forces? Marines? I hear the Navy SEALs get into some real fucked up shit.”

“I don’t know,” Jim replied. “But I want to go find a pay phone and put in a call to Owens. Either he’s got insight to share, or I’m gonna tear him a new one.”

“I’m coming with you,” Joyce told him. Then she turned to Steve and said, “You’re in charge of the kids until we get back. Okay?”

Steve gave her a salute, and said, “Yes, ma’am.”

After they left, Charlie felt Robin hovering around nearby, all irritatingly nervous, and still hopeful. A minute later, Robin came over and asked Charlie, “Can I talk to you?”

“Yeah,” Charlie said with a guilty nod. “Yeah, we should talk.”

When Robin held her hand out to Charlie, it was a lot more than she was expecting to get after all but ignoring Robin for the past week. Surprised, Charlie didn’t think twice before putting her hand in Robin’s and letting herself be pulled into some sort of storage room.

“Things have been hard lately,” Robin began, closing the storage room door behind them. “And weird, and scary. But I kinda thought we were a _team_.”

“Like, all of us?” Charlie asked, pointing back toward the main room. “Or just you and m–”

“You and me,” Robin snapped. “God, Charlie! I thought we were doing so well! I thought we were getting to the place where we could trust each other. With anything.”

“Yeah, I know.” Feeling ashamed, Charlie lowered herself onto the floor and rested her head on her knees. “I _do_ trust you.”

Robin sat down on the floor next to her. “You don’t. You don’t trust me enough to let me take care of you.”

“It’s just…” Charlie sighed as she tried to think of how to explain everything that was going on in her head. “Robs, the first time I saw one of these monsters, I tried telling the people closest to me about it. I told Sean. I told my mom. They both thought I was crazy. Hallucinating. Losing time.” She brusquely wiped the tears from under her eyes. “They just wanted me fixed, as soon as possible. Back to normal. But–”

She scoffed, unable to find the right words to end that sentence. 

“Honey, you’re _not_ normal,” Robin said, a careful smile on her face. “I’m never going to try to make you _be_ normal. I just want to help you be happy.” She wiped a tear from her cheek as well. “Can you trust me on that?”

Charlie’s stomach felt like it flipped over with nerves. Even though she could tell that Robin was being completely sincere, it was next to impossible to push away the fear that one of these days, Charlie was just going to act a little _too_ crazy and that would be it. Robin would leave. She’d be alone again.

Didn’t she owe it to herself to at least _try_ to get it right this time?

“I can try my best,” Charlie said. She put her hand on the ground between her and Robin, palm up, as a sort of peace offering. 

Robin put her hand into Charlie’s and smiled. “Thank you.”

Winding her fingers around Robin’s, Charlie scooted closer to her and put her head on Robin’s shoulder. “Thank you for giving me another chance.”

“Lucky for you, I’m a very forgiving person,” Robin replied.

Charlie scoffed. “You have an entire grudge list written in that kitten notebook you keep in your desk.”

Robin laughed. “I can’t believe I showed you that. I bet I could forgive most of them, now that it’s been a few years.”

Raising an eyebrow at Robin, Charlie asked, “Even Anthony Monaghan?”

“No. That rat-bastard crayon stealer can burn in hell for all I care,” Robin said, giving Charlie a kiss.

Charlie laughed, finally starting to feel a little relaxed after the hell that had been the night before. “I’m sorry, by the way. I’m sorry I acted like an asshole. You were just trying to help.”

“Yeah. That sucked,” Robin told her. 

“Sorry.”

Robin squeezed Charlie’s hand and smiled at her, feeling like forgiveness, but not actually saying the words. Charlie smiled back, not actually needing the words after all.

~*~

Jonathan woke up with his little sister burrowed into his side. Trying not to wake her, he got out of bed carefully, and went out into the main room of the underground shelter.

“Hey, sweetie,” his mother said, standing up and coming over to give him a hug, love and worry prominent in her mind. “How are you doing?”

“Better,” he assured her, hugging her back. “Hungry.”

Steve was at Jonathan’s side when he let go of Joyce. Jonathan wrapped his arms around Steve, hugging him and asking, “What’s going on?”

“Just hanging out. Waiting,” Steve told him. “Trying to figure out our next move.”

“I think we should find the demogorgon,” Jonathan said, sitting down at the table and nodding gratefully when Will set a sandwich down in front of him. “Take out their biggest weapon.”

“Between us, we should be able to do it okay,” El said, like she hadn’t disintegrated one when she was twelve.

Looking around the room, Jonathan asked, "Where's Robin?"

"She went to work," Charlie told him as Nancy set a cup of coffee down in front of Jonathan. "She's trying to get an idea for whether the FBI knew about last night's raids."

Jonathan nodded and took a bite of the sandwich. It wasn't great, but it was energy his body needed, so he ate it anyway. While he was chewing, he asked Hopper, "Any word from Owens?"

Hop shook his head. "Couldn't get him on the phone. I'll call back later tonight and see if I can get a meeting arranged for sometime tomorrow."

"I should call my professor," Jonathan said with a sigh. "If he doesn't let me take the midterm late, I'm gonna have to drop the class." 

Joyce gave him a hug and kissed the top of his head. "Do you want me to call?"

"No, I should do it," Jonathan insisted. "I'm not in grade school anymore, Mom." 

He took the last few bites of his sandwich as she laughed and hugged him again. "I know, sweetheart. I know."

After calling his professors and making excuses, Jonathan was feeling a lot better, so he told El, "I think it's time."

She nodded. "Let's find the monster."

Jonathan sat down on the floor with the others, forming a rough square, or maybe a circle. He had Charlie on his left, Will on his right, and El across from him. Joyce turned on Murray’s stereo to static, and Hopper turned out the lights. 

Dropping into the Inbetween, Jonathan asked, “We all know what we’re looking for, right?”

“Right,” said the others. 

He asked El, “How do we want to do this? Should we stick together, or split up?”

“Stick together,” she told him. “The more we stay whole, the stronger we are, the less likely the demogorgon will be able to strike back at us.”

Jonathan nodded. “Okay. Let’s start searching.”

“I’m going to let everyone see the Upside Down version of everywhere we search at the same time,” Will said. “If these demogorgons are new to the Rightside Up, then _someone_ is crossing that barrier again. We need to be ready.”

"Okay," Charlie said, but she was broadcasting a lot of anxiety. Jonathan tried to think calm thoughts in her direction.

Jonathan let his awareness spread out, and being able to feel both the Rightside Up and the Upside Down at the same time was strange. _Everything_ over there was so cold and dark. Jonathan wasn't sure he'd be able to tell a demogorgon apart from the background misery of that place. But then in unison, all four of them noticed it.

"It's still hanging around the neighborhood," Jonathan said, recognizing the street they found themselves on. "Is it waiting for us?"

"It's going to get more than it wanted," El said, pulling everyone up out of the Inbetween with her. "We need to move now."

"Lights, please!" Joyce called out.

When the lights turned on, Jonathan found himself blinking until he could see again. "What time is it, anyway?"

"Four in the afternoon," Murray said, pointing to a clock on the wall. "It'll be dark in another hour or so."

"How long will it take us to get there?" El asked Hopper. 

He scratched his beard and said, "Depends on traffic. Who's all coming?"

"The four of us," El said. 

Nancy spoke up from behind Jonathan, "Steve and I are coming, too." Her determination felt palpable to Jonathan, and Steve's was right there as well. 

"Ah!" Murray said, standing up and heading toward one of the other rooms. "I have something for you!"

Jonathan shared a confused look with Nancy, but then Murray was back, a spiked bat in his hand. He gave it to Steve. "There you go!"

"This is…" Steve inspected the bat. "This is _mine_. My old one! The one that got confiscated last year. How did you get this?" he asked, looking up at Murray, confused but grateful.

With a smirk, Murray said, "I have my ways."

"Thanks."

Getting Murray's attention again, Nancy said, "Your gun is still back at my apartment. Any chance you've got another shotgun laying around here? I'll bring them both back as soon as I can."

Murray gave Nancy a skeptical look, but she stared him down long enough that he sighed. "Okay, fine. You can borrow Evelyn. But if I don't get both my ladies back, you're hearing about it, missy."

Nancy chuckled and rolled her eyes. "Yeah, okay. Let's get going."

They all piled into Hopper's truck, with Hop in the driver's seat, Steve and Nancy sharing the front passenger seat, and Jonathan crammed into the back seat with his siblings and his daughter. As he looked around at the seating situation, Hopper sighed. "Buckle in as best you can." As the two smallest in the back seat, Charlie and El ended up sharing the middle seat belt. 

His left side pressed tight against his door, and his right side pressed against Charlie, Jonathan said, "Are you sure we can't just take two cars?"

"No," El said, shaking her head. "We need to be close to each other. Just in case."

Leaning up toward Hopper, Jonathan asked, "How do you feel about your next car being a minivan?"

Hop made a grumbling noise, but otherwise didn't respond.

Luckily, Murray's fallout shelter wasn't very far outside the city. It didn't take too long to get back to their neighborhood. Feeling El's pull, Jonathan closed his eyes and together with Will and Charlie, they found the demogorgon again.

"It's hiding out under the El," Jonathan told Hopper. Then he realized that might have been confusing, given the current company. "The train tracks, I mean. Between Cornelia and Newport."

"But it's hiding. Invisible," Will added. 

Jonathan tried his best to look around for other bad actors, but it was difficult for him when he didn't have any emotional attachments to the people who might be waiting for them to return.

Hopper pulled into the alley under the train tracks. "This it?"

"Yeah," El said, motioning for Will to open his door and get out. 

They regrouped outside the car, Jonathan holding El's hand and Charlie's, Will holding El's other hand. El led them toward where the demogorgon was hiding in the dark shadows under the tracks. Joined up with Will, Jonathan was able to see the Upside Down and the Rightside Up at the same time, ready to step over and escape if they needed to. The double vision was a little dizzying, and Jonathan could feel how uncomfortable it made Charlie.

_You okay?_ he asked her silently. _Are you with us?_

"Yeah," she said, giving him a solid, determined feeling. "Let's get this son of a bitch."

Jonathan felt Nancy, Steve, and Hopper at their backs, guarding them as they approached the demogorgon.

_It can sense us_ , Jonathan realized, not quite sure how he was reading its emotional state across the division between this world and the next. _It's gonna run_.

_Not if we can help it_ , El and Will responded with one mental voice. 

Jonathan helped as they _pulled_ , forcing the demogorgon into the light in the blink of an eye. Charlie flinched, but Jonathan held her hand tightly, keeping her with them. It was important for her to feel this. It was important for her to be involved as together they held the monster in place and ripped its body limb-from-limb. It dropped to the ground, lifeless.

_Did you guys feel that_? El asked, and Jonathan sent a vague confusion back in her direction.

_Feel what_? A drop of blood dripped from his nose, down and off his upper lip. 

"When we brought it out," El said out loud, letting go of Jonathan's hand and wiping her own nose with her sleeve. She turned to address the others as well. "Someone was controlling it. _Sleepwalking_ it."

"Oh my god," Steve said, stepping closer to Nancy and looking around. "That shadow monster? Like with Will?"

"It _wasn't_ him," Will said. "It wasn't the mind flayer. I would have felt it. It was something else."

"Nine?" Nancy asked. "He's supposed to be dead."

Thinking back over what he'd felt of the demogorgon, Jonathan shook his head, "No. It's someone else. Nine… felt different."

"Someone else," Eleven agreed, nodding. 

Charlie took a sharp breath beside Jonathan, reaching for his hand and grasping it. "There's more of them," she said, showing Jonathan what she meant.

His heart dropped into his stomach. The crawling, evil, cold feeling was coming from somewhere to the east, and Charlie was right. There were a _lot_ of them. "Oh, shit!" 

"How far?" Hopper asked. "How far?"

Jonathan closed his eyes and tried to gauge the distance, putting that cold feeling over the map of the city he kept in his head. He couldn't quite pin it down until Will took his hand. "Half a mile? They're over by the harbor."

With a nod, Hopper said, "Everyone back in the car."

"Wait," Charlie said, even as she held onto Jonathan's hand as they went back to the car. "Are we going _toward_ them?"

"We can't just leave them there," Jonathan told her, gesturing her up and into Hop's SUV. "More people are going to get hurt."

"Like that poor girl," Nancy said. "The one who went missing two weeks ago. We can't let that happen to anyone else."

"But why does it have to be _us_?" Charlie asked as all four doors of the car shut and Hop started the car. 

Looking over his shoulder at her, Hop said, "Because no one else _can_." He threw the car into reverse and backed out of the alley before turning the car to head east.

~*~

"You know what I need?" Steve asked as he walked backward, one of his hands in Nancy's as he watched the group's tail. Hopper was at the front, an assault rifle up and braced against his shoulder as they made their way through the snow-covered park that led to the harbor down in the partially-frozen lake.

Nancy said, "Oh, watch the ice," and then asked him, "What do you need, baby?"

"A flamethrower," he told her, hefting his bat (his good old bat!) in his right hand. "I would feel a lot better if I had a flamethrower right now."

Nancy chuckled and squeezed his hand.

A minute later Nancy murmured to Jonathan in front of her. "I know you said a lot, but how many monsters are we talking about? Five? A hundred?"

He made a wishy-washy gesture with his free hand, his breath puffing and catching the lights over in the marina as he spoke. "Somewhere between those two numbers."

"Jesus Christ," Steve swore, turning again so he could keep an eye out behind them. No way was he letting some demogorgon asshole sneak up on his family. 

"We're getting close," Will said, and the whole line slowed down. After a few more yards, they ended up crouched beside a short fence, looking over it into the harbor. 

It was Charlie who said, "There's a space beneath us, I think. That's where they are."

"Sewer?" Hopper asked, turning away from the water. Steve watched him spot something and crouch as he ran over to it, El close on his heels. Steve and the others followed, Nancy taking Hopper's rifle when he handed it to her. Then Hop bent down over a manhole cover in a block of concrete in the center of the park lawn. Will took a flashlight out of his back pack, switching it on and pointing it at the manhole.

Before he lifted up the cover, Hop asked El, "Are they under here?"

"Close," she said with a nod. 

Hop nodded back and pulled up the cover with a grunt, rolling it away and onto the grass. Will leaned forward, shining his flashlight down the hole. "I don't see anything right here. They feel like they're closer to the water."

"Give me that, kid," Hop said, taking the flashlight from Will. He took his rifle back from Nancy and put the strap over his shoulder. Sitting on the edge of the manhole, he said, "Get ready to fight."

Everyone nodded. 

Steve felt a little like he was going to throw up, and not because of the smell.

Hopper went down into the hole. A minute later, he called up, "Clear. El, you're next."

Without hesitation, El climbed down into the hole, Will going right after her. Charlie hesitated at the edge of the manhole until Jonathan said something to her that made her make a sour face and head down. Then, Jonathan whispered, "Steve, you go next."

He wanted to argue that he should go last, because he was watching everyone's back, but he didn't want to fuck things up by trying to out-lead Jonathan when he obviously had a handle on it. So, he climbed down into the sewer, the metal ladder heading downward was rusty and fucking cold, but it didn't take too long before he was at the bottom. 

It wasn't quite as cold down here as it was up top, but it was still cold enough that the trickle of sewer water running down the center of the pipe he found himself in didn't smell as terrible as he figured it would. It probably helped that they were close to the harbor and this was likely a storm sewer, rather than the kind toilets and sinks and everything drained into. 

Whispering, Steve asked, "I don't suppose anyone else thought to bring a flashlight?"

Charlie flicked open a lighter and lit it, holding it out at arm's length. Steve couldn't really see very far down the sewer, but it was better than nothing.

"Anyone else get the feeling that we're about to run into some giant, talking turtles?" Steve whispered.

Nancy asked, "What?" but Will gave a muted laugh. Yeah, he totally got the reference. Steve held his hand out to Will and got a quick low-five before Jonathan made it the rest of the way down.

"Let's move," Hopper whispered, taking the lead again. 

Steve was about to ask Charlie for her lighter when he realized that he'd been carrying his own since the molotov cocktails and that first demogorgon. He got it out of his pocket and lit it, holding it up and straining to see past it into the dark sewer behind them. 

Nancy put her fingers through one of his belt loops, leading him as he walked backward, her back just about against his as they moved. It didn't take long before Jonathan whispered, "We're getting really close."

"Where?" Hopper asked, but El grabbed the flashlight from him and took the lead, turning a corner, with Will right behind her, and Jonathan and Charlie right behind them. 

"Shit," Will said, and he and El hurried forward. 

Hopper groaned, "Oh, no," and when Steve took a look over his shoulder, he saw El shining the flashlight on an ashy-looking face, a dark black vine entering its mouth. 

"Where's the monster?" Steve asked, holding up his lighter and trying to see further down the sewer pipe. Actually, he could kind of see light at that end of that tunnel. If his sense of direction wasn't totally messed up by the dark tunnels, Steve guessed that was where the sewer dumped out into the harbor. "Come on, guys. Where is it?"

"We thought they were demogorgons," Jonathan told him, putting a hand on Steve's shoulder. "But they're its victims."

"They?" Steve asked, watching as El shined the flashlight further down that wall of the tunnel. Every few feet, there was a human figure, held to the wall with those same black vines, and one thick, black vine down its throat. "Fuck, I'm gonna be sick. Are they dead?"

"Five," El said when she reached the last figure in the line. She held up her hand and the vines unwrapped from around the figure, and pulled out from his throat. "He's still alive," she told the others, setting the figure down on the sewer floor.

Hopper dropped down beside him, putting his ear to the man's chest. "He's not breathing."

"He's still alive," El insisted.

Jonathan knelt down on the body's other side, pressing his hands to the man's chest and pressing down rhythmically. While he did that, Hopper tilted the man's head back further and pinched his nose.

"Now," Jonathan said.

Hopper blew a breath into the man's mouth once, then twice.

Jonathan started compressions again, and Steve wondered if this was what he looked like when he was trying to get Steve's heart started again. Nancy looked away, wrapping her free arm around Steve and putting her face to his chest. Steve held her close, wondering if she was thinking the same thing. 

Jonathan said, "Again," and Hopper gave the man two more breaths.

Nothing.

Jonathan was about to start compressions again, but Hopper waved him off, "Let me take a turn."

A few seconds in, there was a gross squelching noise. "What?" Hopper asked, holding his hand out for the flashlight. When El put it in his hand, he pointed it at the body, searching it.

Her voice soft and said, El cried, "No. He's slipping. He's…"

Another squelching noise followed and Hopper had just pulled the man's shirt up when his lower belly split open down the center and at least a dozen squirming black _things_ slithered out. Hopper wasn't the only one to yell and jump back in surprise. 

Will cried out, "Pollywogs!" and leaped forward, stomping one of them with his foot. Steve was about to join him, maybe take a few of the little fuckers out with his bat, when he noticed the flashlight glint off something bigger. Taller.

"Will! Down!" Steve cried, winding up and striking forward with his bat, hitting the big demogorgon's arm before it could reach Will. 

Steve stepped back and hit it again as Hopper pulled Will out of there and pushed him at El. The monster growled and tried to take a swing at Steve, but Nancy tugged him out of the way and the others stopped it with their minds. El and Jonathan both cried out with the effort of it, but the monster's head came off and it fell to the sewer floor. Dead.

Nancy picked up the flashlight from the sewer floor and pointed it down the sewer for a few seconds. Steve couldn't see any more of the slugs Will had tried to squish. Then Nancy moved the flashlight to the other figures stuck to the wall. "This is Rebecca Tyler," she said in front of the one that had long, dirty blonde hair. "We didn't save her in time."

Jonathan put his arm around Nancy's shoulders. Hopper took the flashlight and Steve wrapped his arms around both Jonathan and Nancy as Hopper looked things over. 

"El, what about the rest of them?" Hopper asked. "Are any of the others still alive?"

She shook her head. "No. They're gone."

"Who was this man?" Charlie asked her, pointing at the body on the ground. "You knew him."

Nodding, El let Will hug her tightly. "His name is Five. He was one of my brothers."

"One of Brenner's?" Hopper asked her.

"Yes."

Charlie grimaced down at him. "I think the rest of them are full of baby monsters, too."

"That seems likely, yeah," Hopper said with a sigh. Looking at El, he asked her, "What do you want to do?"

El looked around, licking her lips nervously. "We need to burn everything. We can't let any of the small ones live."

"Well, I hate to break it to you," Steve said, "but a bunch of them escaped under the big one's feet." He let go of Jonathan and picked up his bat again. "How fast do we think they are?"

"They're fast," Will told him. "When Dustin brought that one to school back in eighth grade, it was really fast."

"Shit."

"We need some fuel," Hopper said, walking past them toward the water. "I've got an extra gas canister in my truck. Just need to get some gas in it and come back here."

"And hope mommy doesn't come back in the mean time to find daddy in pieces?" Steve asked him.

Nancy took a sharp breath and, pointing at the dead demogorgon, asked, "What about this one? Was it being controlled by someone?"

Steve watched El silently consult with Will and Jonathan before saying, "No."

"Great, that's great," Charlie said with a scoff. "I can't tell if it's _more_ terrifying that one of these was acting without someone directing it, or _less_ terrifying."

"C'mon," Hopper told them. "Stick together. Keep your eyes up. Let's go."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All my monster-hunting-family feels!


	7. Up in Smoke

As Nancy worked with the rest of the group to douse all the bodies with gasoline, she remembered that it was Wednesday night and she was completely AWOL from her meeting for the big history group project. 

“This shit was easier to get away with during high school,” she said to Steve, who had the flashlight in his hand and was watching the sewer for any signs of movement. 

“Yeah,” he replied. “I have a paper due tomorrow. It’s almost done, but it’s in the apartment, and who knows if it’s safe to go back there?”

Pouting as she splashed more of the gasoline onto the last body, Nancy said, “I don’t want to have to move. Our place is perfect!”

“I know!”

Will hissed from the far end of the group, “Another big one! Incoming!”

“Which side?” Steve asked, passing Nancy the flashlight and putting up his bat.

Nancy picked up the shotgun, holding the grip of the barrel in the same hand as the flashlight. She scanned the darkness of the tunnel for any signs of movement. 

“This side,” Will told them, moving toward the harbor side of the tunnel.

El said, “It’s got someone. Come on! Move!”

Nancy turned and followed the group toward the mouth of the sewer pipe. There stood a towering figure, and it was dragging a limp body. 

The demogorgon put up one of its hands and Hopper was knocked to the side of the tunnel. El _screamed_ at it and all of Nancy’s hair stood on end. The demogorgon put up its hand again, but then there was a squelching noise and it ripped into a dozen separate pieces. 

El was left leaning on Jonathan and panting while Will crouched down next to Hopper. 

“Dad?” he said carefully. “Dad?”

Hopper groaned, very much still alive, and Nancy shared a sigh of relief with everyone else. She turned and shone her flashlight back down the sewer pipe, watching for any sign of others. “We should light this fire and get out of here,” she said to the others. 

“Steve,” Jonathan said, “go help Will with Dad. El, help me with this guy. Charlie, you and Nance double back and light it up.”

Everyone moved without hesitation, which made Nancy feel oddly proud of Jonathan for stepping up and leading the group. 

Making sure Charlie was following at her shoulder, Nancy shone her flashlight down the tunnel, keeping her shotgun up and ready with it. It wasn’t too far to go, but Nancy took it carefully, and slowly enough that Charlie had time to ask her a question. 

“How did you learn how to shoot?”

Nancy shrugged. “I’ve always been kind of good at it. The first gun I shot, Jonathan stole from his dad.” She chuckled a little at the memory. “I used it against the monster that took Will. After that…” Nancy shrugged as they approached the gasoline-soaked body of Five. “I practiced whenever I was feeling pissed off. Still have that stolen gun.”

“Jesus,” Charlie said with a laugh. “And here I thought I’d be the criminal of the family.”

“You’ve been arrested?”

“Eh, not _really_ ,” Charlie said, picking up the gas can and leaving a thin trail of gasoline away from the _nest_ or whatever they were deciding to call it. “I got into a fight during high school. The other kid’s parents pressed charges.”

“What happened?”

“Had to do a few hours of community service,” she said. “They expunged my record after I finished.” 

Charlie tipped up the gas canister and twisted the cap closed, placing it a few steps away. Then she took a pack of cigarettes out of her pocket and lit one. She took a drag, blowing out the smoke before smiling at Nancy and saying, “I’ve always wanted to do this.”

Laughing, Nancy took a few more steps back from the gasoline trail. “Go for it.”

Charlie dropped the cigarette into the trail of gasoline. It lit, the fire crawling back into the dark tunnel, and spreading when it reached the gasoline-soaked nest. As it went up in flames, Nancy thought she heard little squealing noises.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said, relieved when Charlie nodded in agreement. “I don’t want to still be here if another big one comes to check on it.”

They backed out of the tunnel, meeting the rest of the group at the outlet to the harbor. The water at the edge of the lake, underneath the sewer outlet was frozen solid, and everyone was standing on it, waiting for them.

“Let’s go, let’s go,” Hopper urged them, holding the side of his head with one hand. “This guy isn’t doing so well.”

Nancy got a look at the young man Will, Jonathan, and Steve were carrying, and said, “Oh, my god. I know him!”

“You do?” Hop asked, urging them toward solid ground a couple dozen yards away from the pipe. “How?”

“He’s one of Lahey’s patients,” Nancy said. “When shit started going down again a few weeks ago, I brushed up on my files. He’s…” Nancy pictured the file that went with this man’s face, dredging up his name from her memory. “Benjamin Garnier. That’s his name.”

“Well, Benjamin is bleeding,” Will said, “so maybe we can get him inside somewhere? Maybe to a hospital?”

“Oh, maybe the naval hospital?” Steve said. “North side? Where I spent a few days after… well, after that business with Nine. Commander Andy knows what’s up.”

“Maybe,” Hopper said. “I want to put in another call to Owens first.”

“So what do we do with him until then? Treat him ourselves?” Nancy asked. Then she remembered seeing a first aid kit in the back of Hopper’s SUV. She snapped her fingers and said, “We’re gonna treat him ourselves.”

“It’s freezing out here!” Charlie said. “We have to get him inside first! There’s an ER literally ten blocks in either direction from here.”

With a sigh, Hopper said, “Okay, stop a second. Let me see him.”

The boys stopped walking, but they kept Benjamin up off the ground. Hopper lifted Benjamin’s jacket, and then said, “Yeah, alright. ER it is. I’ll call Owens from there.”

“Mom’s gonna want an update too,” Will told him as they got to the SUV. 

Hopper unlocked the doors, but Nancy didn’t like the way he was holding his head. Putting her hand out toward him, she demanded, “Keys.”

“No!” he cried, indignantly. 

Frowning at him, Nancy said, “You can’t drive with a concussion!”

He frowned back, until El said, “Dad! We don’t have time for this!”

“Fine!” Hopper gave Nancy his keys. 

As she assessed the situation, Nancy asked, “El? Can you ride in back with Benjamin? Keep an eye on him?”

“Yeah, of course,” she said with a nod, climbing into the back of the SUV and kneeling in one corner as Jonathan carefully closed the hatchback. 

Nancy gave Steve the keys, saying, “We’ll fit better if you drive.”

“Calling me fat, Nance?” he asked, with a smile and a wink. 

“No, just dense,” she replied, earning a laugh from him in return.

Nancy squeezed into the back seat between Charlie and Jonathan, with Will on Jonathan’s other side. Hop took the passenger seat. 

“I’m telling you, Hop,” Jonathan said. “You need a minivan.”

“Advice from one dad to another?” Hop said with a grumble in his voice, but a suspicious smile hiding in his beard.

“Sure,” Jonathan replied, reaching up and clapping Hopper on the shoulder. “That’s exactly it.”

“Which way am I driving?” Steve asked, pulling out of the marina parking lot. 

“Saint Joseph’s is probably closest,” Nancy said. “Take a left, then follow Sheridan when it branches off. Should take us right there.”

“Thanks, babe,” he said, following her directions.

As they drove, Nancy looked over at Jonathan. It was a little difficult to see his face in the dark car, so she asked quietly, “How are you doing?”

“Good,” he assured her. “I mean, worried about school, but otherwise good.”

Nancy squeezed his hand in hers. “Yeah. I know what you mean.”

~*~

After dropping off Hopper, Will, and Benjamin at the ER, Steve drove everyone else back to the apartment. “At least if we can get our school stuff and some clean clothes, that would be most helpful,” he said.

“What do we think the chances are of another demogorgon showing up?” Jonathan asked from the seat behind Steve’s.

“I’m more worried there might be kidnappers staking out the place,” Nancy said. “Can we run a test, maybe? Send in one person and see if anyone reacts?”

“Too risky,” El told her. “Better if we sneak in through the back.”

“Up the fire escape,” Steve said, shrugging. “Except we always keep the windows locked.”

El looked over at him from the passenger seat. “That won’t be a problem.”

Steve almost asked why, but then he realized – superpowers. He parked in the alley behind the building, since they were only going to be a few minutes and El was going to keep lookout anyway. They weren't likely to get a ticket or get towed.

When they got to the fire escape, El pulled the ladder down with her powers. Jonathan went up first, with Nancy and Charlie following him. Steve went next, and El last. By the time Steve made it up the ladder, Jonathan had already opened the window to their bedroom and climbed in.

Steve was climbing through the window when Jonathan switched on the light. Oddly, everything seemed to be in the right place. Well, there were a few pieces of clothing on the floor, but that was kind of the normal state of their bedroom. 

Steve followed Jonathan through to the rest of the apartment. Everything looked fine, except the door jamb for Charlie’s room was splintered and broken. 

“I guess demogorgons don’t know how to use doorknobs,” Steve said, noticing how freaked out Charlie looked. He put a hand on her arm and said, “Hey. I’ll stay right here with you while you get your stuff, okay?”

Charlie nodded and started gathering her things. It only took a few minutes before she had a bag packed and said, “That’s enough for now.”

“Okay, great.”

Steve got started packing his stuff. He was gathering his school things from the living room when Nancy pressed play on the answering machine. 

“Charlie, you didn’t show up for your shift like you promised,” said their manager Sullivan. “Between flaking out again and again last week and just not even calling in tonight? I’m sorry, but I have to replace you.” Steve’s heart plummeted to his shoes. _Well, fuck_. “Come by next week to get your last paycheck. I just… I need reliability, and I don’t think you can give me that right now.”

Steve looked over at Charlie, who sighed and pressed her hands to her eyes. "Shit."

"Fuck, I totally forgot," Steve told her, putting his arms around her. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault," she insisted, frowning when Jonathan and Nancy both joined the hug.

As if she felt left out, El got in on the hug too. She said, "Your boss sounds like an asshole."

Charlie laughed. "Yeah, not really."

"Once all this shit settles down," Steve insisted, "we'll find you something else. I promise."

Charlie nodded, then worked her way out from the middle of the hug. "Let's get out of here." She picked up her bag and went back through his bedroom, toward the still-open window.

After she left the room, Jonathan asked him, "You okay, baby?"

"I'm so tired," he admitted, leaning toward Jonathan. "I wish it was safe to sleep here tonight."

"Me too," Jonathan murmured back, kissing Steve's jaw. 

"C'mon," Nancy said, pulling gently on Steve's arm. "Grab anything you're going to need for the next few days."

"Right," Steve said, getting back to work. He wondered if they were ever going to get to finish college, or if they should just give up and become professional monster hunters. It wasn't the life he wanted, but how could he know about this shit and _not_ help stop it?

~*~

"I'm still not sure I need a bodyguard today," Jonathan said to Will as they walked up the steps to the UIC History building."No one's going to try anything on campus, in the middle of the day."

"Well, they won't if I'm with you," Will said, like he believed it completely. "Besides, it's not like I have anything better to do. I'm gonna be out of school today whether I'm with you or hanging out at Murray's with Mom and Jenny, bored out of my mind."

"True," Jonathan admitted. Murray and Hopper were at St. Joseph's, waiting for Benjamin Garnier to wake up. Apparently he had a concussion and lost a lot of blood, so the docs were keeping him sedated while he healed for a bit. El was on the UIC campus today too, shadowing Steve, while Charlie was with Nancy at Northwestern.

As they got to the second floor of the history building, Jonathan had to take a deep breath and steel himself for the apology he was going to have to make. And then there it was – Professor Moore's office door. He told Will, "Wait out here, would you?" and then he knocked.

After a few seconds, the door opened, and Professor Moore was standing there, his reading glasses on, his bow-tie untied. "Yes?"

"Hi, Professor," Jonathan said, pushing his fingernails into his palm as if that would help him stay focused. "I'm Jonathan Byers. I'm in your Monday/Wednesday History 206 class. I came to apologize about missing the midterm yesterday. I called and left a message."

"Oh," he said, looking a little taken aback. "Usually when someone misses a test, I don't see them until the next class. Either that, or they drop the class."

"I can't afford to drop this class, sir," Jonathan admitted, before shaking his head. "But that's… I want to do well. I actually really _like_ the class, I just…" He sighed, not sure how to explain his absence.

From beside the door, Will said, "Our house burned down."

Professor Moore frowned and leaned out of the door, to look at Will. "And who is this?"

_What the hell are you doing?_ Jonathan asked Will as he said out loud to Professor Moore, "This is my younger brother. Will."

_Just go with it_ , Will told him as he stuck his hand out to the Professor. "Nice to meet you, Professor. I want to apologize, too. If I would have known Jonathan had a midterm yesterday, I wouldn't have called him back to Springfield to help with the clean up."

"A house fire?" the professor asked, shaking Will's hand. And _completely_ falling for it. "How horrible. Was anyone hurt?"

"Luckily, no," Will told him, sighing sadly. "Our little sister did lose a lot of her things, though. She's distraught." 

"Anyway," Jonathan said, turning back to the professor. "I wanted to apologize and ask if I could take the midterm today sometime, or tomorrow."

Moore looked at his watch. "What about right now?"

Jonathan looked over at Will, who shrugged. Then he looked at his own watch. "I do have about forty-five minutes before I have to run to my next class. I _could_ take it now."

"Cool," Will said. "I'll be back in a bit. Good luck!"

_I don't know what the hell you just pulled,_ Jonathan said as he stepped into Professor Moore's office and took a seat at the small table under the window the professor gestured him to. _But thank you_.

_You're welcome_ , Will replied.

~*~

After following Nancy around the Northwestern campus all day while she made an apology tour, Charlie followed her back downtown to St. Joseph's. "They should've sent El with you," Charlie said as they got on the train heading downtown. "I don't know that I'm any good at protecting people."

"Well, I'm armed, if that makes you feel any better," Nancy said with a sweet smile. "You're my extra set of eyes and ears."

With a nervous laugh, Charlie said, "Actually, it does make me feel a little bit better."

"How is everyone else doing? They all okay?"

After closing her eyes and checking in quickly, Charlie told her, "Yeah, everyone's okay. All headed to the hospital now."

"Good. I'm _very_ interested in what Mr. Garnier has to say about what happened."

Charlie nodded and rode next to Nancy in silence for a bit. She wondered if those applications she'd sent out back before Christmas were ever going to amount to something. If _this_ was how things always were, there was no way Charlie would be able to focus well enough to do well at school.

She didn't even know what she wanted to go to school _for_. 

She liked music. That didn't mean she wanted it to be her career. She wondered if maybe Robin was right, and what Charlie actually needed to do was find something she could do with these powers and all the shit she knew now. Something good. Something that could help people.

Something that could help people like Nancy be normal and go to school and follow the paths they set out for themselves. Something that could help her feel less powerless and _terrified_ whenever she so much as _thought_ about one of those demogorgon monsters.

A few minutes out from their destination, Nancy put her hand on one of Charlie's, asking softly, "Are you okay?"

Charlie nodded. "Yeah. I will be."

"Will be?" Nancy asked, her voice still gentle.

Charlie shrugged. 

Nancy put her chin on Charlie's shoulder and said, "Please? Tell me?" 

"I don't like this...this _feeling_ ," she said, putting her hand to her chest. "I hate feeling so afraid all the time. Like I can't even be in a room alone by myself because _something_ bad is going to happen."

Nancy took her chin off Charlie's shoulder, and for a second Charlie jumped to the conclusion that Nancy couldn't relate at all and thought she was stupid and childish. But then Nancy wrapped her arms around Charlie and hugged her, all full of emotions like _love_ and _worry_. 

"I know that feeling," Nancy told her. "I've lived with it for a long time."

The only thing Charlie could think to ask was, "How?"

"Distracting myself with other stuff," Nancy told her. "School. Boyfriends. Unearthing conspiracy theories."

Charlie laughed. "Really?"

Nancy's eyes went wide and she nodded earnestly. " _Really_. I mean, after our first monster hunt, Steve, Jonathan, and I just sort of clung onto each other and never let go. I can't say it was the _healthiest_ coping mechanism, but there are definitely worse ones."

"The drinking," Charlie muttered, following it up with a sigh.

"Yeah," Nancy said. "The drinking. Did Jonathan tell you much about his dad?"

Charlie shook her head. "I mean, just that he's an asshole. I got the feeling that he was," Charlie licked her lips as she tried to figure out how to put this. "That he was _abusive_."

Nancy nodded. "I haven't been able to pry too much out of Jonathan, either. But I do know that Lonnie was always worse to them when he'd been drinking."

"Jonathan told me he started drinking to cope at one point," Charlie told her. "And that's why you guys are so crazy about keeping it away from him."

"Yeah," Nancy agreed with a nod, standing up as the train approached their stop. "And maybe you're not like him when it comes to that stuff, but with the family history…" Nancy sighed. "I just think you should be careful, is all."

"Okay," Charlie promised her, keeping her eyes up as they got off the train, searching for threats. "I will."

~*~

"So, how was your first day of college?" Steve asked El as they walked across campus to where they were meeting Jonathan and Will.

She grinned at him. "It was fun! You get to learn about a lot of cool stuff."

"Yeah, I suppose I do," Steve told her, waving at one of his friends from class. "It's kind of interesting being okay at school now. I never really was before."

"I'm doing better at school this year," El told him. "I'm really starting to get the hang of it." Leaning closer, she said, "I don't get grades like Will, though."

"I'm not even sure _Nancy_ got grades like Will gets," Steve told her. "And she's practically a genius."

El laughed, shaking her head. "Will and Mike want to apply to a school in California. It's called Caltech."

"What do _you_ want to do?" Steve asked her.

El furrowed her brow for a moment, thinking about this. Eventually, she said, "I want to help people. People like me. Protect them and teach them."

"That's…" Steve said, thinking it over. "That's a great idea. I keep thinking about the other kids. The ones after Jenny. They're probably mostly growing up around here, don't you think?"

El nodded. "The ones who didn't get sent back to parents who lived far away."

"Like, who's going to teach them how to deal with everything?" Steve asked her. "You taught Will, and Jonathan, and Jenny, and Charlie. You're a good teacher, El."

She gave him the brightest smile and hugged his arm. "Thank you."

"What do you think?" Steve asked, walking close so she could keep holding onto him. "You and me go into business together? Get Owens to fund us or something. Run a school for kids with powers."

"Like the X-men," El said with a laugh. 

Steve laughed too. "Exactly like the X-men! How cool would that be?"

"So cool," she replied, grinning and squeezing his arm harder. 

"What's cool?" Jonathan asked as he and Will joined them.

Steve clasped Jonathan's hand in greeting – their public version of a kiss – and told him, "El and I are gonna start a school for mutants."

His voice amused and kind of skeptical, Jonathan asked, "Really?"

"I don't know," Steve said with a shrug, checking in with El. "But it _would_ be awesome."

"Bitchin'," El added with a laugh.

~*~

Nancy wasn't waiting with Charlie long before the others all joined them. Steve and Jonathan came from the UIC campus with El and Will. Joyce and Murray came from the elevators. Nancy was surprised to see Joyce, but figured she and Hopper must have switched sometime during the day who was watching Jenny. 

Joyce told them, "The nurse says he's awake now. She'll allow two of us at a time into the room."

"Jonathan and I will go," Nancy said, giving Steve an apologetic look for leaving him out. "The two of us know the most about the Execugen hospital where he was taken."

Joyce nodded, reaching for Jonathan and giving him a hug. “Okay. Be careful.”

“You’ll want room 412,” Murray said, gesturing to the elevators.

Nancy thanked him and took Jonathan’s hand. As the elevator doors closed behind them, Jonathan chuckled.

“What?” Nancy asked him.

Shaking his head, Jonathan told her, “Will says not to have another Mrs. Driscoll incident.”

“Do you think you’d be able to tell?” Nancy asked, pulling his hand closer and holding it with both of hers. “If he’s under someone else’s control?”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan told her with a shrug. “Maybe.” As they stepped out of the elevator together, Jonathan told her. “I think Will might be influencing people.”

“Influencing?” she asked, pointing to her head. “Like with his…?”

Jonathan nodded. “I swear he did something to make my professor believe this excuse he made about the house burning down. It just, it happened so quick, and I wasn’t expecting it. Maybe it was my imagination.”

“He does have a very trustworthy face,” Nancy said, watching the room numbers as they went down the hall. “Maybe it was just that.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jonathan said, but he looked pensive. Nancy wondered if he was having some sort of dilemma about his little brother getting away with a lie. Really, what harm was a little white lie to a professor? Especially if it helped keep the far less believable truth away from people who couldn't handle it?

She stopped Jonathan outside room 412 and put her hands on his face. Meeting his eyes, Nancy told him, “This Will thing is a question for another time. Are you with me? Focused on this?”

Jonathan nodded and put his left hand over her right one. “Yeah, I’m good. Let’s talk to him.”

Nancy returned Jonathan’s nod and then turned away from him and knocked on the door as she opened it. “Hello? Can we come in?”

“Who is it?” a man’s voice replied, and when Nancy cleared the doorway, she found Benjamin Garnier laying in his hospital bed, looking scraped up and a little pale, but otherwise okay.

“Hi, Mr. Garnier,” Nancy said, giving him a friendly smile. “I’m Nancy, and this is Jonathan. We’re part of the family who found you and brought you in last night.”

He looked a little bit overwhelmed and he nodded. “Oh, yeah? Sorry, I don’t remember. Still, you can call me Benjamin. Mr. Garnier is my father.” He gave a moderately nervous chuckle.

With a reassuring laugh, Nancy told him, “Don’t worry. I wouldn’t expect you to remember last night. You were pretty unconscious when we found you.”

“What _do_ you remember about yesterday?” Jonathan asked.

“Oh,” he said, waving the question away. “I don’t remember anything after around three in the afternoon. A few nightmares. That’s it.”

Not wanting to press him too hard on the subject of the demogorgon before he was ready to handle it, Nancy told him, “Look. We’ve actually been investigating a former Northwestern University medical professor – Dr. Lahey – who was arrested last year for performing illegal experiments on students. Now, some of his records were leaked, and I noticed you were on his list of patients. Do you remember Dr. Lahey?”

Benjamin thought for a moment, and then he remembered, “Oh, yeah! I had this thing with caffeine pills. Took too many of them to get through school, started hearing voices. You know how it is.”

Nancy and Jonathan both nodded sympathetically. 

“Anyway. He helped me get off them. I spent like a long weekend or something in the hospital, and when I left, I was better! Great guy! I was really surprised when I heard he’d been arrested.”

Jonathan shared a look with Nancy before asking, “Do you remember anything about the hospital where you spent that weekend?”

“Not really,” he answered with a shrug. “The doctor gave me some medicine before I got in the van, ‘cause I tend to get carsick. Don't remember anything after that."

Suddenly needing to know how in-the-dark this guy was, Nancy asked him, “What have they told you about what happened last night?”

“They said I was attacked.” Benjamin shivered. “By a gang or something? There’s a knife wound on my back they had to stitch up. Concussion, too. They said it might be why I don’t remember anything.”

“Could be,” Nancy replied with a nod. Then she gave Jonathan a look, wondering if he had any suggestions for what to ask next.

Jonathan returned her look for a second, before it looked like he had an idea. He squeezed her wrist in a gesture she thought probably meant, _Trust me_ , and then turned so his back was to Benjamin.

A second later, Benjamin said, "Yeah?" and then, "Of course I can hear you. You're standing right there."

No one else had spoken. At least not out loud.

"Yeah, that's what I thought," Jonathan said as he turned back around. 

"Confirms that theory," Nancy said, looking at Benjamin and wondering if he knew he was psychic, and if he didn't, whether they should tell him. She raised an eyebrow at Jonathan.

He pressed his lips together and scratched his head before sighing. "Benjamin, when you met with Dr. Lahey, did he ask you to pick a few playing cards out of sets of three?"

Frowning, Benjamin looked down for a moment before saying, "Yeah. Yeah, he did." He laughed. "What a weird test for a doctor to do, am I right?"

"And you picked the right cards?"

Benjamin shrugged. "I guess so."

"Dr. Lahey wasn't running an addiction study," Jonathan told him. "He was running a study on people with abilities. _Extra_ abilities. That most people don’t have.”

“Like being double-jointed?” Benjamin asked, holding up his hand and popping his thumb out at a weird angle.

Jonathan sent Nancy a look that definitely said, _This man is a moron_.

Nancy kept herself from laughing, but she had to hide her smile behind her hand. She fought off the smile and cleared her throat, before saying to Benjamin, “Not exactly. We're talking more like telepathy, telekinesis, those sorts of psychic abilities."

Benjamin looked at her blankly for two or three seconds before breaking out in laughter. " _Psychic_ abilities? Oh, man! What are you smoking?"

With a sigh, Nancy looked over at Jonathan. 

Jonathan shrugged and turned his attention to Benjamin. 

After a moment, Benjamin laughed. "Wow! How are you doing that? Throwing your voice or something? What a great trick!"

"I’m gonna strangle this guy,” Jonathan said to Nancy under his breath.

“I have an idea,” Nancy said. “Mr. Garnier. Would you be a good sport and cover your ears?”

With a smile and a shrug, he did so. 

Nancy told Jonathan, “Now say something to him.”

Jonathan rolled his eyes, but he must have said something, because Benjamin’s jaw dropped. 

“How can I hear you?” he asked in a loud voice. “I can’t even hear myself right!”

When he took his hands off his ears, Nancy asked him, “Now do you believe us?”

“Might be the concussion,” he said. “Making me hear things.”

“Just… be careful,” Jonathan told him out loud. “Try not to be by yourself if you can help it. We’ll talk to our guys about getting some cops or someone to protect you.”

“Protect me from what?”

“Benjamin,” Nancy told him, stepping forward and putting her hand on his shoulder. “It wasn’t a gang member who attacked you last night.”

Furrowing his brow, he looked down, like he was trying to remember. Then he shook his head. “It’s all just a blur. What do you think it was?”

“Something that needs you,” Jonathan told him. “Exactly because of those abilities you claim you don’t have.”

“Plus the remnants of Dr. Lahey’s organization. We think they might be targeting old patients. To keep people from being able to testify about the abuse they suffered.”

“People were abused?”

Glad she had grabbed the file the night before and made a copy of it on campus earlier, Nancy took Benjamin’s Execugen file out of her bag and gave it to him. “That’s a run down of everything they did to you during that long weekend. I hope it will help you take all of this shit going on now a little more seriously.”

He took the papers and nodded. “Yeah, okay.” 

As Nancy took Jonathan’s hand and tugged him toward the door, she said, “Be safe, Benjamin. Good luck.”

“Thanks,” he said distractedly, reading the file.

After they left the room, Jonathan asked, “Was it really necessary to give him that?”

“I don’t know about necessary,” Nancy replied. “But I do think it was the right thing to do. He deserves to know his own history.”

“Yeah,” Jonathan said. “I suppose that’s true.”


	8. The Marshal

"Maybe it was a last-ditch Hail Mary move on their part," Charlie said, taking another sip from the thermos of coffee Joyce had given her. She and Jim sat together in his truck, parked at the harbor, waiting for someone to come find the burned remains of two demogorgons and their nest. "Like, this family has consistently been the biggest threat to those people. Maybe they used everything they had left, and now they can’t come after us anymore.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Jim said, his tone saying he wasn't holding out hope for it to be true. The others were all back at Murray’s place, sleeping or finishing school work. She and Jim were the ones who didn’t have anywhere to be anytime soon.

After a few minutes, Charlie asked, "What about the people who were in that nest? Will their families ever find out what happened to them?" 

Jim made a thoughtful humming noise, then said, "Probably not. We only ID'ed two of the bodies before we torched them. Not sure Owens will be looking into identification when his team does their autopsies."

Pressing her lips together, Charlie asked, "Maybe we should have figured out some other way to kill the babies. Instead of destroying those remains." She shook her head. "I’ve seen what _not knowing_ what happened to someone you loved does to people."

Jim looked over at her for a long moment before saying, "We did what had to be done," and turning to face back out the windshield. "Right now these things are being selective. Only taking certain people, people with abilities, whatever that's about. But what happens when they start really getting hungry? One unaccounted death isn't much, stacked up against the possible loss of life we'd be looking at if these things start running around unchecked."

Charlie tilted her head. She supposed the explanation made sense. 

Before she could ask anything else, she caught sight of some movement. "Does that look like someone heading down to the sewer entrance?"

"Yeah, it does," Jim told her, quietly opening his car door. "Let's move."

Charlie didn't have a gun or anything, so she stayed behind Jim as they moved quickly, but quietly, across the greenspace between the parking lot and the tunnel entrance. They sneaked up to the tunnel and then suddenly Jim was turning on a flashlight and holding up a gun at the same time. "Stop right there!"

When Charlie peeked around the edge of the tunnel entrance, she saw a young man startle and put his hands up. Then several things happened in rapid succession. First, Charlie felt the man decide to take aggressive action. Second, she heard the same soothing tone that came from Nancy's power generators, like back in the cabin or at the Byers house in Springfield – and the tone was coming from the man's direction. Third, she realized if she didn't act, Jim was going to get hurt again.

Pulling on the power coming from the man's generator, Charlie _folded_ space to put herself behind the man so she wouldn't see him coming, and then she _pushed_ him over. His face hit the tunnel wall and he slumped down to the floor, unconscious. 

Maybe Jonathan was right. Fighting back _was_ just as satisfying as running away.

"Jesus Christ, Charlie!" Jim cried out, pointing his gun up at the ceiling instead of at her as it had been for a second or two. "What were you thinking? I could’ve shot you!”

Pointing to the man, Charlie told Jim, "He was gonna hurt you."

Jim frowned for a long moment before saying, "Oh."

Approaching the man and kneeling next to him, Charlie said, "Can I get some light over here?"

"Yeah." Jim approached as well, shining the light over the area as Charlie turned the man over. Something on him was still making that tone, so she searched him quickly, before finding a device strapped around his waist. 

"Huh," she said, unbuckling it and pulling it off him, before turning it off and strapping it around her own waist. "Handy."

"What is that?" Jim asked her, putting his gun in its holster and doing his own investigation of the unconscious man, pulling out his wallet. 

"It's a power generator," she told him. "Like the one we used to bring Jonathan and Nancy home. The one you guys have at your house. Someone's duplicated the technology and given it to this guy. Made it portable."

With a sigh, he shook his head. "I'm guessing it's not all that likely that someone else came up with this idea."

"Fuck if I know," Charlie told him. "Did El tell her CIA guy about the machines Nancy and Jonathan built?"

Jim nodded, opening the man's wallet and pulling his driver's license out, pocketing it. "Let's see if we can figure out what he was doing here."

Charlie looked around the area, but all she saw was the entranceway to the tunnel. The nest was up farther, away from the frozen Lake Michigan harbor. "I mean, obviously he was checking on these things, right?"

"Maybe," Jim replied. Then he said, "Well, shit."

"What?" Charlie asked, stepping closer to him again. 

Jim held up a badge that said "Federal Marshal."

"He's a Fed?"

Nodding, Jim patted the man's face a few times. "Hey, hey…" He took the driver's license out of his pocket and shone the flashlight on it. "Hey, Marshal Chambers? Jeremy? Wake up!"

"Did I kill him?" Charlie asked, suddenly not as proud of herself for acting quickly.

Before Jim could answer, the man groaned. 

Sharing a relieved look with Charlie, Jim said, "Uh, hey, Agent Chambers. Can you hear me?"

The man nodded. "What–?" Then he opened his eyes wider and said, "Oh, shit." He patted his waist, obviously looking for his device, maybe even the gun Jim had taken off him. "Oh, shit!"

"Hey, we're not gonna hurt you," Jim told him, wincing at the bleeding wound the guy had on his forehead.

"Sorry about that," Charlie told him, pointing to the wound. "I couldn't let you hurt my…" Charlie looked down at Jim and was at a complete loss for how to describe him. She was sure he wouldn't appreciate being called her step-grandfather. 

"Partner," Jim supplied for her. "Her partner. Speaking of, you got a partner somewhere around here, Marshal Chambers?"

Chambers frowned at Jim. Instead of answering the question, he asked, "Who are you working for?"

"DOE, is the line I’m supposed to give," Jim said, helping Chambers sit up and lean against the side of the sewer pipe. "What the hell is DOJ doing, messing with this shit?" He pointed to the device on Charlie's waist. "It was _my_ people who developed this."

"My department deals with… _difficult_ fugitives. We were put in charge of tracking down certain _targets_ in this area." Chambers looked up at Charlie, "Dangerous targets."

"And this?" Charlie asked, turning off the power device. "What does this help you do?"

"I can cont–" Chambers said, before shaking his head. "It's classified."

"You can control something?" Charlie asked, crouching down next to him, trying to figure him out. She felt El at the back of her mind, so Charlie let her see what was going on. Letting El into her mind gave Charlie an idea, so she asked, "Oh, you can _sleepwalk_ them, can't you?" She got a little reaction out of Chambers, even though it didn't show on his face. "I think we both know what you're looking for in this sewer tunnel. You're going to be disappointed. We killed all of them." 

Charlie sneaked a glance over at Jim, who was honest-to-god grinning. Like this was _fun_.

"Were you controlling the one that 'ported into my house and tried to kill me?" she asked Chamber. "Did your guys try to grab my cousin?"

"Did your guys try to attack my _children_?" Jim asked, and the quiet fury in his voice made goosebumps raise up on her arms.

Chambers looked at them, wide-eyed, and asked, "What answer gets me out of this?”

“The truth,” Jim told him. 

Nervously licking his lips, Chambers looked back and forth between Charlie and Jim a few times. Then he said, “I had a mentor. He was teaching me how to control the – well, the _assets_. The thinking was that if we got the technology down, we could pass them over to the military. I mean, if we could stealth them in behind enemy lines we could do a lot of damage to our enemies. We've found them particularly good at finding dangerous targets. The kinds of targets who get regular soldiers killed.”

“What happened?” Charlie asked him, recognizing the fear and the guilt. 

“I–I lost control of mine, here in the city,” he admitted, except Charlie could feel the telltale waver of a lie.

She smiled and took his hand, asking sweetly, “Why are you lying to us Marshal Chambers?”

“I–I’m not,” he said. 

Then El asked her a question, so Charlie repeated it. “Was your mentor a man named Five?”

Chambers nodded. 

Another question followed, “Do you know that he’s dead?”

He nodded again. 

Catching on, Jim cleared his throat. “Five was the one who lost control, wasn’t he? He lost control and they turned on him. How _many_ of these monsters did he let loose?”

Charlie felt the marshal gear up for something big, so she let El pull his power through her and away, until he was mostly drained. A trickle of blood slid down from Charlie’s left nostril. “Not so fast, Marshal Chambers. We’re still talking.” She wiped the blood on her jacket sleeve, grinning as Chambers looked up at her in horror.

Jim asked him again, “How many monsters did he let loose?”

“Th–three,” Chambers told them. “His fourth had been killed two weeks ago."

Sighing with relief, Charlie said, “Okay. We got all of them.”

“Except if there's one or more Chambers is supposed to be controlling with this," Jim said, tapping on the device at Charlie's waist. "And the attack in Springfield the night before last happened at the same time as the one here,” Jim reminded her. “It was far enough away, it had to be a separate monster. Was that operation run by the marshals, too?” he asked Chambers.

Wincing, he told them, “I’m not at liberty to–”

Jim punched him once, quick and directly in the nose. “I’m only going to ask you this one more time. The operation in Springfield, the one targeting my _eight-year-old_ daughter? Were those federal marshals?”

Collapsed in against himself and looking at Jim with just one slitted eye, Chambers nodded. Then he asked, “Eight years old?”

“Yeah,” Jim told him. “And they attacked her the night before her birthday. For what? We’ve been keeping our heads down. We’ve done everything Owens has asked of us. Who ordered the attack?”

Shaking his head, Chambers said, “I don’t know. All I know is that my division gets orders from someone high up in the D.O.D.”

“But…” Jim gave Chambers a confused look. “Marshals are under Justice, not Defense.”

Chambers shrugged. 

“What about the attempted kidnapping, here in Chicago?” Charlie asked. “Were you involved in that?”

He didn’t seem like he wanted to say anything, but Jim raised his fist again, and Chambers nodded, holding up his hand.

“We had bad intelligence,” he told them. “No one told me there was someone else living in the apartment who would draw Goliath’s attention.”

“Goliath?”

“My asset,” he explained. “It was supposed to be in place at the apartment, and the rest of the team were going to flush the target that way. Except Goliath found a second target, and it wouldn’t listen to me. It went in too early. There was this deep _need_ I couldn't override.” He gulped and looked up at them. “I had to tell my team on the ground to try to grab the target in the street. They failed, and then _something_ happened. Some sort of energy surge and I completely lost control of Goliath.”

“Idiots,” Jim said, shaking his head. “Never mind the fact that you’re obviously playing with fire when it comes to these _assets_ , but several of your targets have been _working_ for the US Government. Primarily against Russian agents. Are you _trying_ to help the Russians win the Cold War?”

His eyes wide, Chambers shook his head. “I had my orders. We were told the targets were dangerous, but valuable.”

“Your orders,” Charlie said. “Were they to capture, or to kill?”

He didn’t look like he wanted to answer, but Jim held up his fist again. “Capture if possible,” he said. “Otherwise eliminate.”

"Eliminate?" Jim asked, sharing a concerned look with Charlie. "Federal Marshals don't assassinate people!"

Charlie asked Chambers, “Why eliminate us? What have we done?”

Chambers shrugged. “I wasn’t told. I was just told that you were dangerous fugitives. I mean, we had evidence. You _killed_ one of our assets. They're supposed to be invulnerable.”

"It's a monster!" Charlie cried, pissed off at having to explain the obvious. "Of course we killed it!"

Then it felt like Chambers was gearing up to do something with his powers again, so Charlie touched his arm and drained him. The flashlight she was holding flickered, then came back on. 

Chambers’ head fell back against the sewer wall, though he stayed conscious. “How the hell are you doing that?” he asked.

Charlie said nothing. For one, she _didn’t know_ how she was doing it, just that with El's help she could. And for two, like hell would she tell him if she did.

“We need to know who those orders came from,” Jim said, taking a pair of handcuffs out of his jacket pocket. “Which means you need to come with us.”

~*~

When Charlie and Hopper got back to the fallout shelter, Jonathan was halfway through his homework problems for his gen ed math class. He had been working quietly at Murray’s kitchen table while most everyone else was asleep, but he got distracted when they arrived. Between the two of them, they held a man who had a shirt tied around his head as a makeshift blindfold. As they walked in, the man swayed on his feet a bit, like he was weak or dizzy.

Jonathan had barely gotten to his feet, asking, “What the…?” when El and Will came out of their store-room-turned-bedroom. 

“Chair,” Hopper said, pointing to one of the kitchen chairs.

Jonathan turned it around for them, watching as they put the man onto it. “What is this?”

“We need to know who he’s working for,” Hopper replied, taking the handcuffs off one of the man’s wrists, looping them through the bars of the chair, and then fastening it again, so the man’s hands were held behind his back.

Jonathan had sort of known _something_ was going on that night, but El had shielded him from most of it, so he could get his school work done. Now, he kind of wished he'd had a heads up that this was coming.

"Hey!" El said, grabbing the man's shoulder. Jonathan felt a sort of gentle shockwave wash over the room, and El said to the man, "No using your powers!"

Hopper untied the blindfold, and the man behind it was pretty young, maybe only a few years older than Jonathan. He was pale, with dark circles under his eyes and a little bit of blood crusted under his nose. Blinking as he got used to the light, the man looked around, frowning at all of them. His brow furrowed in confusion, he said, "You guys are just kids."

With a scoff, Hopper said, "That's what I've been _trying_ to tell you, Chambers. The targets your bosses sent you after aren't dangerous criminals. They're kids. _My_ kids." He bent down and looked Chambers in the eye. "You don't wanna know what a man like me is willing to do to protect his kids."

The fear rolling off Chambers was enough to make Jonathan shiver, his veins filling with ice. It was a perfectly normal reaction to Hop's threat, but something about the man intrigued Jonathan. He pulled another kitchen chair around, sitting in it so he could more-or-less face Chambers and observe him. Then Jonathan asked the others, "What information are we trying to get out of him?"

"The name of his boss, for starters," Hopper said. "The name of the D.O.D. bigwig giving orders to his unit. If they have any other planned attacks in the works."

"Whether they have anymore demogorgons at their disposal," Charlie added.

"How the hell both the CIA and the FBI know about us and have been working with us," Hopper continued, "and somehow the Marshals get the message that we're suddenly the bad guys?"

Chambers got very nervous about all the questions Hopper had. And that's when Jonathan realized what was bugging him about this guy. "He has no shielding. At all."

"Mm, I think you're right," El told him, reaching her hand over to Will, who took it without even looking. She tilted her head as she looked at Chambers, and then said, "We could find his memories. Jenny taught us how to do it."

Another shiver of fright came off Chambers. He made another decision, but before he could carry it out, Charlie's hand was on his shoulder, her other hand in El's. Will's hand wrapped around Jonathan's arm and together they pulled what little strength he had left, absorbing some of it and letting the rest go as another one of those gentle shockwaves.

"No powers," El told him again, sounding like she was speaking to a small child, or maybe a puppy. 

Scooting forward in his chair, Jonathan put his hand on Chamber's knee, saying, "He's not going to stay conscious much longer if we keep having to do that. We'd better grab those memories now."

"Who _are_ you people?" Chambers asked, his words slow and slurred together. 

"We're the family you _really_ don't want to fuck with," Jonathan told him, and then he helped El and the others look for the memories they needed.

~*~

When Steve woke up, he had no clue what time it was, only that there was a body missing from the bed. He pulled on the jeans he'd dropped next to the bed before falling asleep, and went in search of Jonathan. There were lights still on in the main room of Murray's fallout shelter, so Steve followed the hallway down that way, and stopped short when he saw what was going on.

There was a stranger sitting in a chair – likely tied to it, because his head was hanging like he was unconscious, or maybe dead. Murray stood next to a big cork board on the wall, pinning things to a map of Chicago. Jonathan was in the kitchen, cooking something. Charlie was asleep on the couch, and the monitors next to the door showed two figures approaching the shelter door.

Steve got close enough to see that the figures were Hopper and Robin, and when Hopper gave the secret knock, Steve went to go let them in, only for Murray to hiss at him and shoulder his way in between Steve and the door.

Putting up his hands and leaving Murray to whatever door ritual he just had to do, Steve went over to the kitchen. Noting the time shown on the wall clock, he put his arms around Jonathan from behind. "Is that guy in the other room dead?”

Jonathan scoffed. “No, he’s alive. I think he fell asleep.”

At least somewhat relieved, Steve pressed a little closer against Jonathan’s back and asked him, “Why are you cooking pancakes at two o'clock in the morning?"

Jonathan shrugged. "I got hungry after everything earlier. Wanted pancakes." He flipped a few of them and then laid his head back against Steve's shoulder. "I miss our place."

"Yeah, me too," Steve told him, pressing a kiss to Jonathan's neck. "Why don't you eat the ones you've made already? I'll finish cooking the rest."

"Thank you, baby," Jonathan said with a sigh, taking the plate of finished pancakes and replacing it with an empty one. 

As Steve waited for this batch to be done cooking, he watched Robin and Hopper come into the room, giving them a salute with his spatula.

Robin waved back, and then pointed to the guy in the chair and asked Hopper, "This is him?"

"Yeah," Hopper replied, bending down in front of the guy and snapping his fingers. “Hey, Chambers. Wake up.”

The guy’s head rose up slowly, like he was having a hard time waking up. Steve pulled the pancakes out of the pan and put them on the plate. There was still some batter left in the mixing bowl, so Steve poured the last of it out into three little pancakes. 

Robin bent down to put herself at eye level with Chambers, and said, “Agent Robin Buckley, FBI, Special Investigations Unit. I hear we’ve got ourselves a big old interdepartmental fuck up on our hands here, Marshal Chambers.”

“Will you, _please_ , get these people to uncuff me?” He pleaded. “This is unlawful imprisonment!”

“Hmm,” Robin said, moving a chair so she could sit in it backward and face Chambers. “I don’t know, man. You and I need to have a chat with my superiors. What assurances do I have that you'll come with me peacefully?"

"I–" He frowned. "I didn't even _do_ anything! These people attacked me!"

Robin laughed a little bit. "No? My informant tells me you admitted to taking part in an extrajudicial kidnapping attempt that resulted in three dead. That your unit set dangerous animals loose in the middle of Chicago, leading to five more deaths, and when those animals were killed, _I_ was the one left cleaning up your messes. That your unit raided a home in Springfield, intent on capturing three _minors_ , one of whom is only eight years old. On what evidence? Where's your warrant? Which judge signed off on this bullshit?"

Steve found himself smiling at the way Robin was vomiting words all over Chambers, likely confusing and upsetting him. She did it to Steve a lot, but he always found it amusing, rather than upsetting. At least, he did after they'd become friends. She'd done it a couple of times before they'd figured each other out, and it _had_ been upsetting back then.

"I had orders," he said, coughing and clearing his throat. 

"Oh, you had orders," Robin said with a scoff. "Way to use the same excuse used by all those Nazis at the Nuremberg trials. Yeah, _that's_ gonna go real well for you, buddy."

As Steve flipped the last set of pancakes, Chambers said, "But–"

"Nuh-uh," Robin told him, holding up a finger. "How do you think it's going to look when it comes out that your department was trying to kidnap _children_? That's not even mentioning the fuckin' monsters you guys let loose, and their five victims. What are we supposed to tell their families? It's not like we can tell them you guys fucked up and let loose a couple of interdimensional monsters who decided to use the victims’ bodies as baby slug monster incubators." 

Steve was suddenly glad that he hadn't been hungry, because Robin's words made him not even want to look at the pancakes in front of him. Jonathan must have had the same sort of problem, because he set down his fork and pushed his plate away.

"So," Robin continued. "You can see why I'm pissed."

There was a long moment of silence, during which Steve checked the pancakes and found them not quite done yet. 

Eventually, Chambers asked, "What do you want from me? Your people already scooped up a bunch of my memories."

"Memories are a little disjointed. What I want is pure and simple: _names_ ," Robin told him. "All the names in your chain of command, as high up as you can go."

"You don't have jurisdiction over me."

"Wanna bet?" Robin asked him. "While you've been playing around with monsters, I've gotten myself put on every team that even remotely has to do with all this supernatural bullshit. Maybe I don't have superpowers, like you. And maybe I can't control interdimensional monsters, but I _know shit_. And I know that if the top name on your chain of command is Alan Brown, then everything you've been up to has less to do with national security and more to do with him covering his own corrupt, evil ass."

Even Steve could tell what Chambers' change in posture meant. Robin had put the pieces together. She'd cracked it. 

"Did you know that he was planning on selling kids?" Robin asked him, and Chambers slowly shook his head. 

Steve took the last few pancakes off the skillet and onto a plate before turning off the stove. 

"Yeah," Robin told Chambers as Steve went over to them, watching Chambers' face. "That eight-year-old that your team could have killed. Some Wall Street asshole paid Brown's company four million dollars for her. Jesus, Chambers, she's like _you_. And you're working with the unit that would've either captured her so she could be turned over like some sort of runaway slave, or killed her so she can never testify about the people who kept her locked up her whole life. Do you understand how fucked up that is?"

Chambers looked down and nodded. 

From the corner of the room, Hopper cleared his throat and asked, "Do you know for a fact that it was Alan Brown who ordered these attacks?" 

"No," Chambers told them, but he shifted in his chair a bit. "I heard my boss's boss talking about it last week. He said Undersecretary Brown was scrapping one of his projects. That he needed us to clean it up."

Something was bothering Steve, so he asked it then, "How did the Marshals find you? Like, to recruit? Not just anyone can…" Steve wasn't sure how to describe whatever ability it was that allowed someone to control a demogorgon.

“I was already a Marshal,” he said. “I was in my last few weeks at Academy when Marshal Five came through and assessed everyone. I passed his test.”

At the mention of Five, Steve couldn't help but picture the guy's gut splitting open and all those slug-things squirming out. Disgusting.

Pushing his plate away even further, Jonathan asked, "Why would you ever trust yourself to keep control of one of those things? Can't you tell how cold they are? How evil?”

Chambers actually scoffed. "They're not _evil_. They're animals. They don't think in terms of 'good' and 'evil.' They just have needs."

"See, there's something I'm curious about," Robin said, her eyes never straying from the marshal's face. ""How _much_ does one of those things eat in a day? Are we talking one goat a day? Two? A whole cow?"

"That's gotta get expensive," Steve added, knocking his elbow against Robin's arm. "I'm guessing they're not satisfied by kibble."

"No," Chambers said, but he didn't elaborate.

"What about it's other needs?" Steve asked, unable to get that image out of his head. "Like–like _reproduction_."

"Yeah," Robin asked. "How come they kept bringing people with powers back to their nest? Five, Rebecca Tyler, Benjamin Garnier? All brought to that same nest, or whatever it was."

"I'm not exactly sure," Chambers said. "I just know that they're really good at finding people with abilities. A lot better than any of the other methods we've got."

"How many are left?" Steve asked him. "We got, what? Three of them, right?"

“Four. One last week. Three yesterday.”

Chambers answered, "Only one more loose, that I know of. Goliath."

Jonathan spoke up. "How many more is your group trying to keep under control?"

Chambers coughed and looked away from Jonathan.

"How many?" Jonathan asked again, standing up. 

Giving in, Chambers told him, "Aside from the ones that you destroyed, five adults."

"Wait," Steve said, catching the implication Chambers had made. "Five _adults_. But how many babies?"

"I don't know," Chambers said. "All I know is that the adults grown on pigs were too weak. Not invulnerable enough to be worth the risk of using them. I didn't ask what the new crop were going to be raised on."

"Jesus Christ!" Robin cried. "You didn't ask because you didn't want to know the answer. It's people, isn't it? People _exactly_ like you."

"How long, do you think?" Jonathan asked him. "How long before they decide you know too much and need to be fed to those things?"

"No! They wouldn't!" The light above the kitchen table flickered. Jonathan stood up and went to Chambers as he continued to speak. "There's only a few of us who know how to control them. I'm too valuable!"

Jonathan put his hand on Chambers' shoulder, and a second later Chambers sagged, dropping his head and giving a low groan.

Steve asked Robin, "So, what do we do now?"

" _You_ go back to bed," Robin told him. "You've got school in the morning."

"What are you going to do with _him_?"

With a sigh, Robin said, "Honestly, I don't know. Without someone draining him constantly, it's not safe to keep him awake. But I _really_ don't want to keep him sedated either."

"Yeah, it's not fun, being sedated like that," Jonathan told her. "I'll come with you. I've already called in to work. I think between you, me, and Charlie, we should be good to get him anywhere we need to."

Robin nodded and Steve didn't stop himself from wrapping his arms around Jonathan, hugging him close and praying that everything was going to return to normal soon.

~*~

Jonathan managed to catch about an hour of sleep after El got up and took over watching Chambers, but then it was time to accompany the marshal to someone who would know what to do with him. Jonathan changed into fresh clothes, his whole body dragging, urging him to get back in bed. Nancy must have noticed him struggling, because she stepped close and started buttoning his shirt for him.

"Thank you, sweetheart," he said, resting his forearms on her shoulders and clasping his hands behind her neck, wanting to pull her closer.

"You're welcome," she said, smiling up at him as she did the last button and then moved her hands to his waist. "You know, I meant to go back to that store before Valentine's Day on Sunday, but it's already Friday and this shit is still going on." She sighed, stepping closer and wrapping her arms around him.

Not quite getting it, both from being distracted by how nice the hug felt and from being muddled by his lack of sleep, Jonathan asked, "What store?"

Before Nancy could answer, the door opened and Steve slipped into the room. "Hey," he said, approaching them and joining the hug. "Hop wants to leave soon so he can meet Robin and Owens and everyone after he drops us off."

Nancy groaned a bit. "This bullshit is ruining our Valentine's Day plans."

"Shit," Steve said, looking at Jonathan as he asked, "Did we have Valentine's Day plans? I can't remember."

"Not really," Jonathan admitted. "It's kind of been low on the priority list lately. Sorry, Nance."

WIth a little laugh, Nancy said, "Don't worry about it. We can celebrate next week or something."

"Yeah," Steve added. "First we have to throw Jenny a birthday party. Maybe at our place, if all of this settles down?"

"Of course," Jonathan told him. "I hope Mom can reschedule the party she was supposed to have with her school friends. It would–"

Jonathan stopped short when he caught a cold, dreadful feeling from Will in the other room. He was just about to ask him what was the matter, when all the lights flickered.

"Shit," he said, pulling away from the others, his heart up in his throat. "Grab a weapon," he told them as he left the room, grabbing Charlie's hand when she offered it.

"Where is it coming from?" Robin asked, her gun out of its holster.

El and Will joined him and Charlie, all of them linking hands. 

"There," El said, directing them to look toward a space on the ceiling, just above where Chambers was shackled to the chair.

Jonathan did a quick inventory of his people in the face of the looming threat. Steve and Nancy were to his right, armed with a bat and a shotgun, respectively. Robin and Hop were to the left, behind El. Murray and Joyce were behind Jonathan, protecting Jenny between them.

Will reached out with his free hand, _pulling_ Chambers and his chair across the space, away from the bulge descending from the ceiling. Jonathan could feel the way the pull was El's intention acting through Will's body, the two of them almost blended together in a way Jonathan didn't have the time to worry about just then.

The demogorgon ripped through the ceiling, unfurling down until its clawed feet were on the floor. Jonathan realized that it hadn't come from the Upside Down, but from the warehouse above them. It had ripped a portal through solid matter, both sides in the same universe. There was no time to think about that now, though.

As a group, Jonathan and the others held the demogorgon in place. It lashed out with a pulse of energy, the things on the kitchen table flung away from it and into the wall near Steve. Jonathan was glad to be able to tell without looking that Steve was startled, but uninjured. Jonathan needed to focus on the monster, not able to spare a glance toward anything else.

A deafening shot rang out, and El assured Jonathan it was just Hop firing his gun. Nancy's blast followed. Jonathan felt the way the monster was annoyed by the guns, but not injured or enraged. What enraged it was the man sitting in the chair between it and Jonathan.

The monster held up a hand and Chambers' chair slid five feet toward it before Jonathan and the others could stop it.

God, he was so tired. The others were exhausted, too, reaching for power that just _wasn't_ there as they tried to keep the demogorgon from grabbing Chambers. Jonathan could feel the monster's malice, it's almost gleeful hatred and need for revenge against the man who had dared think he could control it.

_We need more_ , Will told the others. _We need Mom and Jenny_.

Jonathan and El both recoiled from that idea, knowing just how much risk there was, versus the amount of extra strength it would grant them.

The demogorgon opened its face and screamed at them, taking several steps forward before they could stop it. The pull on Chambers began again and Jonathan felt him slipping out of their grasp. _We're losing him!_

Darting forward unexpectedly, the demogorgon grabbed Chambers, sinking claws into him and making him cry out weakly. Quick blasts from Hopper's gun deafened Jonathan, distracting him from the struggle to get Chambers back, to save his life. 

_What about this_? Charlie asked, and then Jonathan heard that same soothing tone that came from the machine Will and El had set up at the house in Springfield. Charlie pulled on the power that went along with the tone, sharing it with the others. 

They pulled Chambers away from the monster, and Jonathan decided enough was enough. He led the group in breaking the demogorgon's neck. Suddenly, the monster's grip on Chambers eased and he skidded back toward Jonathan and the others, almost crashing into them before El stopped him. Jonathan could feel how the monster was still alive, still enraged, still fighting to get up and wreak vengeance on everyone in the room.

Jonathan used the last of his strength to pull the monster's head from its body, and finally it went lifeless.

Feeling his legs start to go out from under him, Jonathan let go of Charlie's and El's hands and sat down on the floor. His vision started to go black, so he decided to give up the fight and laid down, his vision of the ceiling slowly coming back. 

When the rushing in his ears cleared, Jonathan heard Hopper saying, "Here's the keys. Get him off that chair."

"Got it," Steve replied. 

When Jonathan looked up, his mother had a dishtowel pressed against one of the wounds in Marshal Chambers' side, and Hopper and Nancy were coming back with more towels. Jonathan laid there and breathed, looking up at the ceiling while the others got the marshal off the chair and laid him out on the floor, practically right next to Jonathan.

“Shit,” Nancy said, pushing another towel against the wound. “If he keeps bleeding like this, he doesn’t have much time. He needs an ambulance.”

Murray cried out, “No! You can’t bring the authorities here!”

“It’s a man’s life, Murray!” Joyce yelled at him. “We’re calling the damn–”

“I have a faster way!” Charlie shouted, putting her hand back in Jonathan’s and pulling him up until he was sitting. “I can only really picture St. Joseph's. I don't know any of the hospitals closer to here. But I can get us _there_.”

“It is pretty far from here,” Jonathan said, a little dizzy, but recovering quickly. “Do we have enough strength to get there?”

She turned the device still strapped around her waist back on. Jonathan wondered why he hadn't noticed her turn it off. “Now we do.”

Nodding, Jonathan told Nancy and Steve, “Meet us there, okay?”

“St. Joseph’s,” Nancy said with a nod. “See you there.”

El and Will moved closer, and the four of them huddled around Chambers, all holding onto each other and him. Then Charlie drew on all of them. Teleportation felt like a wave crashing over him, and Jonathan suddenly found himself somewhere else. The air bit at his skin and lungs, the concrete was icy-cold under his legs.

“Everyone okay?” Jonathan asked, suddenly too cold to feel fatigued, wiping the blood under his nose with his shirt. 

“Okay,” said Will, getting to his feet and helping up El. 

Charlie moaned, her head pressed against the alleyway ground. 

Feeling suddenly, sickeningly worried for her, Jonathan put his arm across her back. “Charlie? Are you okay?”

“I’m good,” she insisted, sitting up with a sniffle, blood dripping from both nostrils. “We gotta get him inside.”

“Help me carry him,” Will said, getting his arms under Chamber’s armpits and lifting his torso. Jonathan got his middle section and El took his legs. “That way.”

At the end of the alley, they found themselves about ten yards from the emergency room. Charlie stumbled along ahead of them, coming back with a wheelchair. Jonathan helped the others get Chambers into the chair. Then they pushed him through the doors.

Jonathan called out, "Help! We need help!"

A couple of medical personnel came over, taking the wheelchair out of Jonathan's hands. He wobbled over to one of the chairs in the waiting room, sitting down and laying his head back to try to stop the tunneling of his vision. Charlie sat next to him and put her hand over his, anxious but not overly so.

"You did good," Jonathan told her. "We would've been toast without you."

"Fuck yeah, you would have," she replied, and when Jonathan looked over at her, she was grinning. 

He gave a tired laugh before putting his head back against the headrest and giving into the way his vision went dark.


	9. Chapter 9

Riding through Friday morning traffic in the city made Nancy want to tear her hair out with frustration. Leaning forward in her seat, between Robin, who was driving, and Steve in the passenger seat, Nancy asked Robin, "Don't you have like lights and sirens and everything, now that you're a full agent?"

"I don't have arrest powers," Robin said, "so no, unfortunately. I just arrive at a scene after the fact."

Nancy gave a groan of frustration. "What if they didn't make it there? What if they got lost on the way or something? They were all so tired."

Turning around in his seat, Steve reached back and put his hand on Nancy's knee. "Don't do that to yourself, Nance. We're going to assume they're fine, until we find out that they're not."

"Yeah, I know," she told him, putting her hand over Steve's. It helped the haphazard beating of her heart, but not by much.

Eventually, they made it to the hospital, parking in the lot. Hopper's truck pulled in right behind them and Nancy found herself leading a group of six to the hospital's emergency department. Little Jenny had to run just to keep up. Nancy spent the whole trip focused on getting to the right place, because otherwise her mind would start trying to solve the problem of what she would have to do if Jonathan was gone.

As soon as Nancy stepped through the doors into the ER waiting room, she saw Charlie. She hurried toward Charlie, wrapping her arms around her and holding her tight. "I was so worried," Nancy cried, stepping back a little so she could get a better look at her. She seemed whole, and in a relatively good mood.

"Where is everyone else?" Steve asked, prompting Nancy to look around the waiting room. 

"They took Chambers back," Charlie said. "And Jonathan passed out, so they took him, too." Just as Nancy started to panic about that news, Charlie held up her hand. "The twins are with him. He's fine."

"Can I…" Nancy said, pointing toward the doors that went back into the department from the waiting room. "I need to see him."

Nodding, Charlie said, "El is coming out to get you."

Nancy took a deep breath and nodded, holding onto Steve when he pulled her into his arms. Softly in her ear, Steve whispered, "You heard her, babe. He's okay. It's okay."

Wiping away the tears of relief, Nancy nodded against Steve's chest, just breathing with him while they waited. In the periphery of her vision, Nancy saw Robin show her badge to one of the nurses, probably getting access to Chambers, if she had to hazard a guess. Hopper gave Joyce a quick kiss to her head before following Robin, skating by on Robin's authority and his ability to look like he was in charge.

But then the door opened and El was there, holding it open for them. Jenny ran forward, hugging El and making a smile spring onto El's face. When Nancy reached her, El said, "They're only letting two of us back with him at a time. He's straight back that way." 

Nancy started walking forward before she second guessed herself and turned back to check with Joyce. "Can I–?"

"You two go," Joyce said, pushing Steve along with Nancy. "I'll see him in a bit. Send Will back here, would you?"

"Sure thing, Mom," Steve said, squeezing Joyce's hand and ruffling El's hair as he passed her. Nancy took Steve's hand and led him back through the space full of curtained-off beds and medical personnel. 

Ahead of her, Will stuck his head out from one of the curtained rooms. "In here."

Nancy hurried forward, Steve right behind her, and then they were at Jonathan's bedside. He was wearing a hospital gown and had an IV in his arm, and oh, god. His hands were clutched tightly around the blankets covering his legs and his jaw was clenched, though he smiled a little bit when she met his eyes. 

"Hey," she said, recognizing how much he still hated hospitals. Sitting on the bed next to him, Nancy said, "We're here, honey. We're here. It's okay."

Nodding, Jonathan pulled Nancy into a hug, Steve joining them when he made it to the other side of Jonathan's bed. "I'm fine. They're gonna release me as soon as this bag is done," he said, nodding his head toward the bag attached to his IV line.

"You passed out?" Steve asked, cupping Jonathan's face in his hand as he stood back up.

Jonathan nodded, curling his hand around Steve's wrist. "Just exhaustion. Dehydration. The usual."

Nancy gave an unamused scoff. "I hate it when you push yourself too hard."

"What choice did I have?" Jonathan asked, folding one of his hands in hers. "I couldn't let it hurt anyone. I couldn't let it hurt _you_." He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her fingers.

Unable to help the smile that crept across her face, Nancy told him, "You're such a sap."

"Self-sacrificing idiot," Steve added, but he ducked in, stealing a soft kiss from Jonathan. Nancy scooted closer, getting her own kiss once Steve was done.

The curtain rustled and a nurse came through, stopping short when she saw them. Clearing her throat, the nurse said, “Sorry. It’s family only back here.”

“They are my family,” Jonathan told the nurse, like it was just that simple. 

“Girlfriends don’t count,” she said, pointing to Nancy. “Miss, I’m sorry, but–”

“No, you don't understand,” Nancy told her, trying to sound just the right amount of indignant. “I’m Jonathan’s _wife_.”

“And the mother of my daughter,” Jonathan added, wrapping his hand around Nancy's.

The nurse narrowed her eyes at them. "What's your daughter's name?"

"Charlie," Nancy said at the same time as Jonathan.

Their answer, and probably the lack of hesitation before they gave it, seemed to surprise the nurse. She paused for a moment, before pointing to Jonathan's hand. "Why aren't you wearing a wedding ring?"

"This is ridiculous," Nancy said under her breath as she reached for Jonathan and pulled on the chain around his neck until his ring lifted out from under the hospital gown. "It's right here."

Jonathan smiled at the nurse and told her, "I kept taking it off at work and losing it."

"Okay, but what about him?" the nurse asked, pointing at Steve. "Who are you?"

"His brother, obviously," Steve said, putting his hands on his hips. "You can ask our mom if you want. She's out in the waiting room."

"No, I met his brother," the nurse said, crossing her arms. "He was just in here a minute ago."

"I can't have more than one brother?" Jonathan asked her, which made Nancy bite her lips so she wouldn't laugh. 

The nurse huffed and said, "Fine. You're only going to be here another half hour anyway." She took Jonathan's blood pressure and checked on the IV, and then she huffed again and left.

Once she was gone and the curtain was closed again, Nancy snuggled into the crook of Jonathan's left arm, hugging him close and kissing his cheek. Steve sat on the other side of the bed, holding Jonathan's hand.

After a moment, Steve said, "I don't want to give up our apartment. I don't want to give up on school."

"Me either." Nancy pouted at Steve. "For a while there it felt like we were actually going to be able to have a relatively normal life. Guess not."

Jonathan stiffened under Nancy, so she turned and asked him, "What?"

He licked his lips and shrugged, looking away from them for a moment before he said, "They're only really after _me_. Maybe I should go–"

Before Nancy could cut Jonathan off, Steve did. "No you fucking should _not_. At least not by yourself. We go where you go, Jonathan. _Forever_." He gave Jonathan a significant look. 

"But," Jonathan said, looking over to Nancy. "Just for awhile? Just until everything calms down again? Nance, you can't drop out of _Northwestern_."

"I can and I will, if it means keeping you safe," Nancy told him, hugging Jonathan tighter. "Were you or were you not the man who stayed trapped in the past with me for almost a year? Even though he could have left much earlier?"

He sighed, but closed his eyes and nodded. 

"And hey," Steve said, leaning closer to Jonathan and giving him a soft kiss. "You said it yourself, babe. We're your family. You're not getting rid of us."

"Okay," Jonathan told them, hugging Nancy close and squeezing Steve's hand in his own. "Okay."

~*~

“Okay, here’s the situation,” Dr. Owens said from the head of the meeting room table. Jonathan sat on one side, between Nancy and Charlie. El and the rest of the Springfield Byers sat across from him. The meeting room itself was in one of the office buildings downtown, in a nondescript office on the fifteenth floor of a nondescript building. Jonathan hated the way the walls felt too close together and the air felt too thick.

Owens continued, “This was a pet project of one of the research wings of the DOD. They kept all their activities behind so many layers of red tape…” He gave a little chuckle. “I think they must have invented three or four new ones.”

Jonathan sighed, thinking it hadn’t been very funny when they were fighting for their lives against a monster who wanted to feed them to its babies.

“So, my people have been digging into the files we unearthed and Agent Buckley’s hunch appears to be holding water. DOD green lit the Execugen facility, and once you all brought that project to the light, they started in on this one. They put one of _my_ assets on the new project without telling me, and–”

“Five worked for you,” El said, and it wasn’t a question. “That’s why you told me not to go looking for him.”

Owens nodded. 

" _And_ they tried to cover their asses when he fucked up and got himself killed. Tried to play it off like you guys were responsible. When the joint chiefs found out about not just what they were doing, but who they were going after? They were not happy." Owens whistled. "Hell, Undersecretary Brown has become _persona non grata_ inside the beltway, and everything he's ever touched is being handed over to the inspector general."

"What does that mean for us?" Hopper asked him. "Can we go back to our lives?"

"Yes," Owens said, but he lengthened the word in such a way that Jonathan knew there was more to the story.

Clearing his throat, Jonathan asked, "What is it?"

"Declaring the young Miss and Mister Byers untouchable was," Owens gave a small huff of laughter, gesturing to El and Will, "well, it was fairly easy. But they've been consistently delivering results for us in the Intelligence Community for a couple of years now. They've made themselves invaluable." He gestured toward Jenny, who was sitting between Joyce and Hopper. "And of course getting an order of protection for the little Miss Byers was easier done than said, given her age, but…"

When Owens turned to face Jonathan, he felt his stomach drop with nerves. He managed to ask Owens, "But what?"

"There's been some _concern_ about you, Jonathan. From the higher-ups I report to. They started getting the details about our clean up of the Execugen facility and…" Owens sighed and shook his head. "Seventeen bodies is a lot for one person to be capable of dropping single-handedly."

" _Seventeen_?" Jonathan asked him, sick to his stomach and trying to remember his escape from the Execugen hospital. "That can't be right."

Owens shrugged one shoulder and said, "Well, we counted."

El stood up and said, "I'm responsible. I showed him how to do it."

"It was self-defense," Nancy added. "He'd been kidnapped!"

"Yes, yes, I know all of this," Owens told them, gesturing for El and Nancy to sit down. "I've made these same arguments to the joint chiefs. They're still concerned."

"What, exactly, are they concerned about?" Jonathan asked, reading Owens as carefully as he could while still exhausted. 

"For one, you single-handedly destroyed one of these upside down monsters they were so enamored with…"

"No, I didn't," Jonathan told him. "Steve and Nancy slowed it down and hurt it first. And I…" He looked over at Charlie, but he wasn't sure how much he wanted to tell Owens about her, what she was capable of, or where she'd come from. "I had help."

As Owens looked over to Charlie, Jonathan knew he'd made a mistake. Shit.

"Yes, I don't believe we've met," Owens said, addressing Charlie. "What's your name, sweetheart?"

Frowning at Owens, she said, "Charlie," and left it at that. 

"Mm-hmm," he said, looking between her and Jonathan. "One of the reports I got last fall mentioned a cousin coming to visit. And I do see the family resemblance, but I must admit, I'm confused. We ran significant background checks on the whole family when Mister Will over there was in our care. Never did we run across a cousin matching Charlie's age."

"That's fuckin' creepy," Charlie said. "You know that, right?"

"Maybe so," said Owens. "But it's my job to know… _everything_ about this topic. And Agent Chambers is certainly convinced that you have abilities. So, the question I have is… where the hell did you come from?"

Charlie looked him dead in the eye and said, "Oregon."

"Oregon," Owens repeated, looking less than pleased. "Alright."

Wanting to change the subject, Jonathan asked, "What do your bosses want with me? To help them be less _concerned_?"

"Well…" Owens sat back in his chair, looking at Jonathan. Though his emotions were difficult to read while Jonathan was so tired, his face was not. He knew what he was going to say would be a hard sell. "We _did_ just lose Agent Five. He'll need to be replaced. Taking on his role in my organization would be a good sign that we can count on you to be on the right side of things."

_Fuck_.

"No," Joyce said, pointing her finger at Owens. "Whatever you want him to do for you, no!"

Owens sighed. "Joyce, he's an adult. It's not your decision."

"What are we talking about here?" Nancy asked. "What, exactly, do you want him to do for you?"

Suddenly, sickeningly, Jonathan knew the answer. "Assassinations, right?"

Owens winced, but he didn't refute Jonathan's guess. "There are other things, but...that would be the skill that has the highest value to the joint chiefs." 

"What else could Five do?" El asked. "Could he control people like he could control demogorgons?"

Widening his eyes, Owens said, "That's, um, that's classified."

"He means yes," Jenny said, not looking up from her coloring book. 

"I can't do that," Jonathan told Owens. "And even if I could learn, I wouldn't."

Nodding slowly, Owens said, "That's fine."

With a sigh, Jonathan closed his eyes before he spoke again. "What do you want me to do, and what would I get in return?"

"Well, in return, I could add you to our list of, um, _untouchables_ , as it were. You'd be able to live your life without interference from any part of the federal government."

Hopper spoke up. "But _what_ would you be asking him to do?"

"Sometimes," Owens said, "in the course of maintaining our place in the geopolitical hierarchy, we need certain tasks to be performed.”

“ _What tasks_?” Joyce demanded.

“Usually the retrieval of certain items or people of use to the intelligence agency. _Sometimes_ the elimination of a threat to national security.” Jonathan’s distaste must have shown on his face, because Owens said, “Just think of it as self defense on a grander scale!”

“I can’t do that,” Jonathan told him. “I won’t. It’s not self defense, it’s _murder_.”

“It’s war,” Owens told him. “I mean, I didn’t want to put this out there, but several of the joint chiefs are of the ‘if you’re not with us, you’re against us’ type. Anything you can do to prove you’re with us, the more likely they are to leave you alone.”

Jonathan groaned. His head hurt too much to be able to think through this clearly. He wanted to be a good person. Nancy and Steve and the rest of his family deserved a good person. But how could he do what Owens was asking him and still remain a good person? How could he refuse, and maybe have to go on the run? How could he do that knowing that Steve and Nancy would drop everything to go with him? 

Maybe he owed it to them to at least give this a try? 

Before he could make up his mind, Charlie spoke up. “If you’re going to make Jonathan do this, you have to let me work with him. We’ll do it, but only as a team.”

_We will_? Jonathan asked her, looking over as Charlie reached for his hand and held it.

"We won't murder anyone," Charlie insisted. "But maybe by working together, we can grab them instead."

"Grab them how?" Owens asked her.

_You don't know what you're promising them_ , Jonathan told Charlie, but she made a face at him in response.

_Yes, I do. I'm giving you a better chance at a normal life_ , she said, before speaking out loud to Owens. "I can teleport."

Jonathan couldn't help but let out a disappointed sigh. He knew that El and Will had been filling Owens in on what they were up to, but after he had been used as bait when it came to the Execugen debacle, Jonathan hadn't wanted to give up any more about Charlie than they needed to.

"Teleport?" Owens asked in an impressed tone, before writing on the notepad he had in front of him. "That could make things interesting."

_This is going to end badly_ , Jonathan told Charlie. She squeezed his hand.

"If we do this, if we replace Five for you, you have to keep Jonathan's school schedule in mind," Charlie told Owens. "And you have to pay us."

"Done and done," Owens said with a nod and a smile. "I'm looking forward to working with you. Now, just so we can make sure to get you on the payroll, Charlie, what's your full name?"

Jonathan closed his eyes and shook his head as she told him, "Charlotte Everly."

Charlie squeezed Jonathan’s hand again. _I understand that you don’t trust him, but I need this. I need to feel like I’m helping. Like I’m not just running away all the time._

Jonathan looked over, meeting Charlie’s eyes for a long moment, and then nodding to show her that he understood. _Okay_.

Charlie nodded back. _Okay_.

~*~

After Owens let them go, they reconvened at Murray's place to get their stuff and help him clean up a bit. Then, Steve and the others said goodbye to the Springfield Byerses, with promises to visit the following weekend to celebrate Jenny's belated birthday. Robin drove everyone else back to their apartment in Boys town, parking a few blocks from the building. Steve was feeling clingy, so he grabbed Jonathan's hand, holding it while they walked the rest of the way home. Jonathan didn't pull away.

Steve figured Jonathan and Charlie agreeing to work for Owens was better than going on the run, but he still didn't like the idea. It felt too much like a deal with the devil. It felt too much like Jonathan sacrificing himself for them again. It felt too much like Jonathan was going to disappear on them again, not kidnapped by Execugen, but by the US Government. What would happen if they put him in a situation he couldn't get out of? Were they going to get him killed? 

So, yeah. Steve was feeling clingy.

When they got to the apartment, Charlie stopped short in the doorway.

"What's the matter?" Steve asked her, looking over Charlie's shoulder for something wrong. The apartment looked like it always did.

Shaking her head, Charlie said, "I can't sleep here. I can't…"

"Come stay at my place," Robin offered right away. 

Charlie looked at her for a long moment, and then nodded. "Okay. Let me get some of my stuff."

Entering the apartment felt so much like finally being home, that Steve couldn't help but drop his bag and collapse down onto the couch. Nancy joined him a second later, sitting sideways, putting her legs over his and leaning into him so he could put his arm around her and hold her close. Jonathan joined them a second later, sitting on Steve's other side and putting Nancy's feet in his lap.

"Should we…" Nancy said carefully. "Should we think about finding a new place to live?"

"If Charlie can't live here anymore…" Jonathan said, looking down the hallway toward Charlie's room. "Maybe we should?"

From the other room, Charlie called, "You guys don't have to move."

Before Steve could ask if that meant she was going to be okay coming back in a few days, Charlie came out into the living room, her bag packed. "Just because I can't stay here anymore doesn't mean you should move. I'm thinking…" She looked over at Robin. "I'm thinking about getting my own place."

Steve couldn't help but be surprised. He could have sworn Charlie was getting ready to just _move in_ with Robin. Like, yeah, they'd only been dating for maybe four months, but it didn't seem all that out of the question to Steve. Then again, he could definitely see Charlie needing her own space, and Robin's studio apartment only had one main room and the bathroom. Being in close quarters like that every day would probably put too much strain on their relationship. Charlie finding her own place was a better solution.

"Let us know if we can help you find something," Steve said. "And I mean…" He looked at Nancy, then Jonathan. "Feel free to come back here. That room is yours if you want it."

Steve saw Nancy nodding as Jonathan said, "Yeah. It is."

"I appreciate that," Charlie said before looking over her shoulder at the hallway. "But I don't think it's gonna happen. For my own sanity, I can't…"

"We get it," Nancy said, leaving Steve's lap and standing up to give Charlie a hug. "It took all of us a long time to get used to sleeping at Jonathan's old house after we fought the first monster there. Moving out is probably for the best."

Charlie nodded. She gave hugs to Steve and Jonathan, and then she and Robin left with promises to get in touch the following day.

Steve watched Nancy lock the door behind them. He asked the others, "What should we do now?"

"We should get Jonathan into bed," Nancy said, offering her hand to him. "You haven't slept enough this week."

"Neither have you," Jonathan told her, but he let Nancy pull him to his feet and lead him to the bedroom. Steve followed them, his hands on Jonathan's shoulders, unwilling to let go of him until he had to.

Neither of the others turned the bedroom light on, so Steve left it off as well. It was late afternoon, still light enough outside to make the lamp unnecessary. Used to Charlie living in the house with them, Steve closed the bedroom door behind him. When he realized that Charlie wasn't going to be living here anymore, he thought about opening it back up, to make a point of it. Then he realized that Charlie could still come back to pick up her stuff, so he left it closed.

Nancy helped Jonathan out of his pants and socks while he took off his sweater, then crawled into bed in a t-shirt and boxers. Steve stripped down too, getting into bed with Jonathan. Nancy took off her clothes, but opened the dresser and took out one of Jonathan's t-shirts and put that on before laying down on Jonathan's other side.

"I don't like this," Steve said, putting one of his legs over Jonathan's thighs and reaching across him to brush the backs of his fingers against Nancy's stomach. 

"Charlie moving out?" Nancy asked him, putting her hand in Steve's and kissing Jonathan's shoulder. 

Jonathan rearranged, getting his arms around both of them, holding them close.

"No, I meant this deal with Owens," Steve told them, pressing his face to the side of Jonathan's neck. "I can't lose you, Jonathan."

"Me neither," Nancy said. "I feel a little better about Charlie going with you. You guys can look out for each other."

Jonathan sighed, closing his eyes. "Yeah, I hope so. I don't want to leave you, either."

"We're supposed to get married," Steve told him. "And, like, get old and wrinkly together."

Jonathan smiled and gave an uneven breath that could have been a laugh. "I want that too, baby." He turned his face and gave Steve a kiss. "Maybe if I do one or two things for them, I can get them to leave us alone."

"Maybe," Nancy said. "Or maybe we can get something else, find something else, to hold over them as leverage. So they have to let us be."

"Yeah, maybe," Jonathan said, kissing Nancy and then hugging both of them closer. "Maybe."

It couldn't have been ten seconds later before Jonathan fell asleep. After a minute, Nancy whispered, "I don't think I can sleep yet."

"Yeah," Steve whispered back. "Me neither."

He watched as Nancy got out of the other side of the bed and came around to his side. He turned around, putting his back to Jonathan so he could hold her close and keep her from falling out. "I know it's Friday night," she whispered, kissing Steve, "but I kind of think we should be trying to catch up on school work."

"We'll do it tomorrow," Steve told her. "Take a day off from the gym."

"Maybe we should make some Valentine's Day plans," she said, wearing the expression she usually got when she was blushing, except it was too dark to see if she actually was blushing or not.

"Yeah?" he asked her, letting the hand he had around her back wander lower. "What sort of plans were you thinking, Nance?"

Smiling as she tilted her head up and kissed him, Nancy said, "I was thinking pancake breakfast…" She moved Steve's chin with her hand and kissed his throat next.

"Good start to any day," Steve agreed, finding the hem of the shirt Nancy was wearing and getting his hand up underneath it to touch the skin at her waist.

"And take out for dinner…" she added, kissing his neck again, sucking lightly on his skin and making Steve groan low in his throat and hold her tighter.

"What about the rest of the day?" Steve moved his hand down further, cupping her ass cheek and squeezing gently.

"The rest of the day, we're going to figure out how to use the toy you and I are going to go buy tomorrow."

Steve couldn't help but shiver. Then he squeezed Nancy's butt cheek again. "I've been thinking about that a little bit."

"Yeah?" she asked. "Just a little bit?"

"There's been a lot going on lately," he explained. "But what I've been thinking is…" He pulled back far enough that he could see her face. "I'd feel better about letting you do me if you felt what it was like first. How gentle you have to be."

Nancy frowned at Steve. "I can be gentle."

Steve winced. "Well…"

"Steve!" 

Beside them, Jonathan mumbled and scooted further away, sprawling out face down on the other side of the bed. 

Whispering, Steve said, "Maybe we should take this discussion into the other room."

"Maybe," Nancy said. She sat up and looked down at Steve. "You really want to–to fuck my ass?"

Shrugging, Steve asked her, "Why wouldn’t I?"

"I just…" Nancy made a face. "Don't think it would feel very good."

"No? Jonathan and I both like it,” Steve pointed out. “What makes you think you won’t?”

Nancy said, “Because I don’t have a prostate.”

“Oh,” Steve said. A second later, he insisted, “I still think I could make it feel good for you. But if you don’t want to give it a try, it’s not something I want to do either.”

Nancy nodded and looked up at the ceiling for a long moment before she spoke again. “Maybe we could start slow,” Nancy told him. “Like, one finger sort of slow.”

“We could do that,” Steve agreed, giving Nancy a nice, long kiss. Looking over at Jonathan, Steve asked Nancy, “Should we go out to the couch or something?”

“Let’s just ask.” Nancy reached over and shook Jonathan a little. “Hey, sweetie?”

“Hmm?” Jonathan asked, still mostly asleep.

“Can Steve and I have sex in the bed, or do you want us to go elsewhere and let you sleep?”

“Stay,” he said, scooting further toward the other side of the bed and falling back asleep immediately.

Steve couldn’t help but smile and shake his head. “Okay. If you say so.”

Nancy kissed Steve, getting his attention and climbing onto him. When she broke the kiss, she sat up, pulling her shirt off and tossing it into the floor next to the bed.

Steve put his hands on her waist and said, “I will never get tired of how beautiful you are. Damn.”

Nancy giggled and kissed him again, pulling on Steve’s shirt until she got it off him. As they kissed, Steve got them flipped over so Nancy was on her back. Before they got too far into things, he grabbed the lube from the nightstand drawer and put it where he could find it on the bed. 

While he was doing that, Nancy took her own panties off, obviously eager to have at least some sort of sex. Her eagerness was definitely a turn on, and Steve thought maybe he wasn’t feeling patient enough to go as slow as he needed to. Then he remembered what they were working toward – Nancy fucking him – and he found the motivation to hold off. 

Steve kissed down Nancy’s chest and her stomach, making his way toward her pussy. She sounded pleased and desperate enough that he dove in without hesitation, licking up her slit and sucking on her clit. She groaned, pushing her fingers into his hair and tugging gently. Steve licked at a nice pace, not slow enough to be frustrating, but definitely not fast enough to get Nancy off anytime soon. When he felt her relax into it, Steve grabbed the lube and put some on his fingers. 

Dragging them across her asshole, Steve asked, “This okay?”

“Oh,” she said, taking a sharp breath when Steve put his mouth back over her clit. “Try that a–again.”

Steve pressed his fingers around the rim again, spreading the lube and teasing her. She kept making pleased noises, so he kept doing it. Then he dipped one finger in, just a little bit. He didn’t notice any change, so he grabbed a little more lube and dipped his finger in a little farther, still gentle and teasing.

“Oh!” Nancy said, taking another one of those sharp breaths. That sounded good, so Steve did it again. And again. 

After a minute, when she started to relax and anticipate his movements, rolling her hips with him, Steve asked, “Can I try adding another finger?”

Nancy nodded. “Yeah. Please!”

He got some more lube on his fingers and held them both at her entrance while he licked into her pussy and up to her clit. He licked and sucked a few times in succession and then pressed his fingers in ever so slowly. 

He felt the bed shift and when he looked up, Jonathan was awake and kissing Nancy. The sight made Steve’s cock ache, and he pressed it against the mattress to ease some of the feeling and focused instead on fucking Nancy with his fingers. 

Slowly, he sped up, adding a little more lube until the slide was tight, but easy. Then he had an idea. He put his knees under him so he could use his other hand too. He slid two fingers from that hand into Nancy’s pussy and flicked her clit as quickly as he could with his tongue. 

Nancy cried out and a few moments later, clenched around his fingers, arching her back and tightening her hold on his hair. “Ah, fuck! Steve!”

When she finished coming, Steve carefully pulled his fingers out of her. He picked up the shirt he’d been wearing earlier and wiped off his hands and his face. “Well?” he asked as he laid back down next to her. “How was that?”

“Better than I was expecting,” she admitted, tilting her head so Jonathan could kiss her neck. “Definitely enjoyable.”

Steve grinned and kissed her, then reached over and kissed Jonathan too. An idea occurred to him, and then he couldn’t get it out of his head. He leaned over farther and asked Jonathan, “Can I fuck you, babe?”

Jonathan nodded sleepily. “Mm-hmm.”

Grinning, Steve kissed Jonathan again, before getting out of bed and turning on the desk lamp. 

“What are you up to, baby?” Nancy asked him as Steve came back to bed. 

“I am going to show you,” Steve said, pulling on Jonathan’s hips until he got his knees under him, “how our Jonathan likes to be fucked.”

Jonathan let out a sleepy whine, so Steve rubbed his back to soothe him. 

“I’ve seen you do this a lot,” Nancy said, handing Steve the lube when he reached for it.

“Yeah, but I still think it would be helpful.”

“Come _on_ ,” Jonathan groaned, his face all but buried in the pillows.

Steve opened the lube and poured a bunch of it on his fingers before slicking himself up. “First thing – ah!” Steve said, shivering at the feel of the cold lube on his cock. “Is to use way more lube than you think you need.”

“Okay,” Nancy said, moving closer to him on the bed, like she was trying to get a better view. 

“Then I usually use my cock to spread it around a bit, but,” he lowered his voice, “that’s just ‘cause it feels good for me.”

Nancy laughed.

Steve leaned over and kissed her. “You could use your fingers if you want.” He spread the lube around again, making sure everything was nice and slick. “Then I just very gently press right against him like this.”

Jonathan made a pleased sort of noise, and rocked his hips a little, pushing himself onto Steve’s cock. Steve put his hands on Jonathan’s hips, and said, “It might be a good idea the first time or two to let him set the pace, like this, but he likes it better if you’re the one in control.”

Steve held Jonathan steady with his hands and rocked into him, pushing pleased little murmurs out of him with every thrust.

“That’s a good noise,” Nancy said, running her hand up and down Jonathan’s back.

“Yeah, it is,” Steve replied, mostly focused on not coming too early as he finished bottoming out. “How’re you doing, babe?”

Jonathan tried to say something, but he had to clear his throat before it came out right. "More!"

"Right," Steve said, drawing out and then pushing back in a little faster this time. He told Nancy, "You want the – ah, shit – the slide to be easy, so he doesn't get hurt." Steve kept himself to a fairly slow pace at first, even though he knew both he and Jonathan wanted it faster. "It's totally cool to… to, like, stop and add more lube if you need it."

"Steve…" Jonathan said, rocking back against him harder.

"Sorry." Biting his lip because the tight, wet, hot feeling of being inside Jonathan was as incredible as always, Steve gripped Jonathan's hips tightly and sped up. "That better?"

“Y–yeah,” Jonathan replied. “Yes.”

"Shit, yeah. That's good," Steve agreed, watching Nancy watch him. Then he realized, "Fuck, I'm getting close."

"Mm-noooo. Not yet," Jonathan muttered, so Steve did his best to think about anything other than what it would feel like to come inside him.

With a little smile, Nancy leaned closer to Jonathan and whispered something in his ear. He nodded, and then Nancy grabbed the lube from where Steve had left it on the bed. She put a little in her hand and reached under Jonathan, touching his cock.

Jonathan groaned and clenched around Steve, which made him hiss in response. "Fuck, you feel so good, babe. So good. Love you."

"You too," Jonathan said. "C'mon, baby. Steve. Nance, oh, fuck. Yes!" He took a sharp breath and groaned, "Ohhhh," which was exactly what Steve had been waiting for. 

Steve pressed in tight, grinding against that one spot Jonathan loved, basking in the heart-thundering relief of finally getting to come. As he caught his breath, Steve ran his hands over the warm skin on Jonathan's back, enjoying being close to him. Then Nancy caught one of his wrists and pulled Steve toward her. He went, pulling out of Jonathan carefully before moving to where he could kiss Nancy. 

He ended up lying between the two of them, Jonathan clinging to his back, sleepily kissing his neck, Nancy pulling his hand to her chest and turning so he was spooning her. "What do you think, Nance?" Steve asked in a whisper, kissing Nancy's shoulder and breathing her in. "Was that helpful?"

Mumbling against Steve's back, Jonathan said, "We can show you again tomorrow, if you want."

Steve laughed, rubbing his foot against one of Jonathan's legs. "You willing to be my teaching aid some more, huh?"

Jonathan laughed softly too, before saying, "Other way around, might be helpful to see, right, sweetheart?"

"Oh, definitely," Nancy said. "If you're feeling well enough by then to be more active."

"Feelin' pretty good right now," Jonathan said with a happy sigh against Steve's back. 

"Good." Closing his eyes, Steve settled in, getting comfortable. "What about you, Nance?"

"My ass feels too wet," she said, and Steve couldn't help but laugh, especially when Jonathan let out a sleepy giggle behind him. It was okay, though, because Nancy laughed too, before pulling herself out of Steve's arms.

"No, come back," Steve told her, pouting at his empty arms. 

Nancy rolled her eyes and leaned over the bed, kissing him. "Just gonna go wash up. I'll be back in a minute."

Steve fell asleep before she returned.


	10. Valentine's Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just in case you weren't expecting this, pegging occurs in this chapter :)

"Okay, this is it," Nancy said, pulling the Omni into the parking lot of the sex shop. "Let's get this over with."

Getting out of the car, Steve said, "Aw, come on. We have a little time. Why can't we look around some?"

"Because I will _die_ of embarrassment," Nancy told him, reaching for Steve's hand and holding it as they went through the doors. The same woman from before was behind the counter, and Nancy could already feel her face getting red. 

She got her license out of her purse and handed it to the lady, elbowing Steve so he would do the same. She took Nancy's ID and looked at it, handing it back without comment. Then she took Steve's, looked at it for a moment, and gave it back, saying, "Happy twenty-first birthday next month."

"Thanks," Steve replied, giving her a baffled sort of look until Nancy grabbed his hand and pulled him down the aisle they needed. He stopped short halfway down, saying, "Oh, what about some of these?"

"Handcuffs?" Nancy asked, making a face. "Yeah, no thanks."

Steve rolled his eyes. "Not for _you_."

"Oh." Nancy thought about it for a second before telling Steve, "That's the sort of thing we'd have to ask about first. I have a feeling it would be too much for him."

"Yeah, I could see that," Steve said, letting Nancy pull him the rest of the way down the aisle. When they got to the right display, Steve said, "Wow, that's a lot of dicks."

Nancy couldn't help but laugh.

"What?" Steve asked her with a smile.

Shaking her head, Nancy told him, "I said the exact same thing."

"Nice," he said with an approving nod. "So, which one do you want to get?"

"I don't know," Nancy told him, leaning closer. "Which one do you think you and Jonathan would both like?"

Steve took a moment to look over the options. "Jesus, I don't know."

"These are the ones that work with the harness thing," Nancy said, pointing to the shelf. "Should we start smaller, since you're so concerned about me being gentle enough?"

Steve's eyebrows jumped up and he made a half-shrug sort of gesture. Then he reached for the shelf and said, "What about this one?" 

It was the same blue one Nancy had picked out for Robin.

"No, nope, not that one," Nancy said, taking it from him and putting it back. "Here, this pink one is almost the same size."

Steve stuck out his tongue, "Eugh."

"What?"

Shrugging again, Steve crossed his arms. "Pink is too, I don't know, _life-like_. It's weird." 

Nancy couldn't help but laugh. "This whole thing is weird."

"Why can't we get the blue one?"

Nancy closed her eyes and admitted, "Because Robin bought the blue one."

"Oh," Steve said, nodding. "Okay, that's a good reason." Then he reached for the display, picking up a green dildo. "What about this one?"

"Sure," Nancy said, taking it from him and feeling the weight of it. "Yeah, okay. Grab one of the boxes and let's go."

"You can go," Steve told her, handing her the box. "I wanna look around some more."

Sighing, Nancy said, "Fine. What do you want to look at?"

"Dunno." They walked through the store, and Nancy saw when something caught Steve's eye.

Nancy tried to follow his line-of-sight, but he was tall enough to see over the shelves and she wasn't. "What is it?"

She hurried after him, and almost ran into him when he stopped. They were in a section full of all sorts of lingerie. Steve put his arm around Nancy and pointed her to one of the display mannequins. It was wearing a red teddy and panties, both embellished with delicate white lace. "If I got that for you, would you wear it?"

"Sure," Nancy said, looking around a little bit to see if there was anything that looked a little more comfortable. Instead, her eyes landed on a red pair of men's briefs covered in little white hearts. Grinning, she turned Steve toward them and said, "I'll wear what you pick out, if you wear those."

Laughing, Steve nodded. "Yeah, okay." He went over to the rack and picked out the right size. Holding the briefs in front of his crotch, Steve asked, "What do you think? Hot?"

"No," Nancy said with a laugh, pulling him down so she could kiss him. "Very cute, though."

"Think we should get a pair for Jonathan, too?" Steve asked, flipping through the underwear on the rack.

Nancy snorted. "I'm not sure there would be any way for us to convince him to wear something like this."

"True," Steve said. He moved over a rack and took a pair of silky boxers off the rack. "What about these?"

"Hmm, maybe," Nancy said, feeling the fabric between her fingers. "Doesn't hurt to ask."

Smiling, Steve kissed Nancy again. "Tomorrow's gonna be fun."

"Yeah, I hope so," she replied, letting Steve hug her closely.

~*~

Between an actual full night's sleep and getting to spend a day at work, not really thinking about much of anything at all except for which car was next on his list, Jonathan felt a lot better on Saturday night than he had the day before. He caught the train most of the way home, getting off one stop early and walking over to the pizza place where he was meeting the others. 

His brain was still a little tired, so it took a moment after walking through the restaurant door to find the right table. What clued him in was the bright sound of Robin's laughter. He found her and Charlie at a round table with Steve and Nancy. He sat in the empty chair between Nancy and Charlie, letting Nancy pull him into a kiss before he said, "Hey. Sorry I'm late."

"It's no big deal," Charlie insisted. "We just ordered without you."

"Hope you're not feeling picky," Nancy said, letting go of Jonathan's arm long enough for him to get his coat off, then scooting close again. 

"I'm not picky." He leaned back, putting his arm around the back of Nancy's chair. Steve grabbed Jonathan's hand, squeezing for just a second before letting go. "At least, not when it comes to food."

"Music is a different story," Steve said with a knowing grin. 

Not bothering to answer the obvious, Jonathan asked, "What were we talking about?"

"Robin was just telling us about how her new boss got his tie stuck in his typewriter," Steve said. "I'm assuming we're laughing because he's still okay. Didn't strangle himself accidentally?"

"No, nothing like that," Robin told them. "But by the time he called for help, the only thing we could do was cut his tie off. He spent the rest of the day without a tie, because his was toast."

"I'm guessing that's a bigger deal at the FBI than it would be anywhere else," Nancy said, reaching for her soda and taking a sip through the straw. She offered the straw to Jonathan, but he declined, grabbing the glass of water in front of him and drinking a good third of that instead. 

Robin nodded and pulled a piece of cheese bread from the basket in the middle of the table. "Oh, it was. I think he got officially written up for breaking dress code, and everything. When I mentioned keeping an extra tie in his desk, he looked at me like I was a genius, instead of someone who _routinely_ spills lunch on herself."

Charlie laughed, leaning closer to Robin. Jonathan was glad she seemed to be doing better than the day before. Leaving the apartment had probably been a good decision on her part, despite how oddly empty it had felt that morning when he got up to get ready for work.

Dinner was easy, and fun, and it felt like getting back to normal. It felt like family. That’s why it was so jarring when Robin pulled him aside as they left and said, “Hey. I might have found something in the financial records I ran today. Do you know who Lonnie Byers is?”

Feeling suddenly queasy, Jonathan said, “Yeah. He’s my asshole dad. What financial records did he come up in?”

“Money outgoing from the same account that pays for Olive Thompson's lawyer,” Robin said. “Looks like he got paid about five grand total, in two separate installments.”

Jonathan shook his head and sighed. “I knew there was no reason he’d track me down if there wasn’t some money in it for him.” He scoffed. “Glad to know my life is only worth five grand to him. Makes it easier to write him off completely now.”

“I’m sorry,” Robin said. “I’ll try to get him charged with accessory to attempted kidnapping, but honestly, I don’t think it’s gonna stick. It might be easier to get a restraining order.”

“Do whatever you’ve got to do,” Jonathan told her. “I just don’t want to think about him at all anymore.”

“Understandable,” she replied.

At home, Jonathan curled up around Nancy, his head in Steve’s lap as they all watched some stupid Tom Hanks buddy cop movie that Steve had rented. Jonathan dozed for most of it, enjoying the feel of Nancy in his arms and Steve’s hand running through his hair. 

The next morning, Jonathan woke up alone. He frowned, but he could also tell that Nancy and Steve hadn’t gone very far. He yawned and stumbled into the kitchen, finding fresh coffee in the coffee maker. He poured himself a cup and started drinking it as he went to the closed bathroom door.

After he knocked, Nancy’s voice called out, “Come in!”

Jonathan wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but Nancy and Steve both crammed into a tub full of bubbles, facing each other, definitely wasn’t on the list. “Hey,” he said, stepping into the room and closing the door behind him to keep out most of the cold. “What are you guys doing?”

“Bathing, obviously,” Steve said, tilting his face up as Jonathan came over, puckering his lips for a kiss. Jonathan gave him one, before leaning over and kissing Nancy as well.

“It doesn’t look like you guys fit very well,” he said, sitting on the bathroom floor and taking another sip of his coffee.

“Yeah, not really,” Steve said, running a razor over Nancy’s leg before rinsing it off in the water. “Still fun, though.”

“Wanna go out for brunch once we’re done?” Nancy asked, reaching out with one dripping-wet hand and tugging on his sleeve. "Pancakes?"

"You guys didn't get enough pancakes yesterday?" Jonathan asked them. "Don't you go every Saturday?"

"We didn't go yesterday," Nancy told him. "We went shopping instead."

"Shopping?" Jonathan asked. "For what?"

"It's a surprise," Steve told him with a self-satisfied smile.

“A surprise for _when_?” 

Turning her leg and watching as Steve shaved it, Nancy said, “For later. After brunch, at least.”

Jonathan laughed and nodded. “Okay.” He stood up, telling them, “If there’s going to be surprises later, I’m going to get some of my schoolwork done now.”

“Oh, shit, don’t remind me,” Steve said with a sigh, laying his head back against the tiled wall. “I have so much I need to do to catch up.”

“Hey,” Nancy told him, poking Steve’s cheek with her toe. “We’re celebrating love today. The rest of the semester can be for schoolwork.”

"Okay, Miss Overachiever-I-Go-To- _Northwestern_." Steve rolled his eyes, but he was smiling and Jonathan couldn't help but laugh too.

He left the bathroom, and as the coffee started kicking in, Jonathan was able to get most of his reading assignment done before the others were done bathing. Steve came into the living room with a towel wrapped around his waist, which was distracting enough, but then he said, "Hi," and pulled Jonathan into a set of deep kisses. 

They stole Jonathan's breath away, leaving him panting as he asked, "I thought you wanted to go out."

Smiling, Steve kissed him again. "I do. We're going to need fuel for the rest of the day. I just…" Steve gave Jonathan another kiss. "Haven't kissed you enough lately." 

Feeling warm with love, Jonathan set his work aside and wrapped his arms around Steve, holding him close.

Eventually, they made it to breakfast and back home again. Jonathan could feel how excited they both were on the walk back. It wasn't a surprise when Nancy turned around and kissed him on the stairs leading up to their apartment, swiping her tongue across his lips. 

"Is this when the surprise is happening?" he asked her, following her through the apartment door Steve was holding open for them. 

"The first part," Nancy said as Steve closed the door and locked it before wrapping his arms around Jonathan from behind and kissing his neck.

"There's multiple parts to this surprise?" he called after Nancy as she headed toward the bedroom. She didn't respond, but Steve sucked on Jonathan's neck and tugged at his sweater. Chuckling, Jonathan asked, "Really? Right here in the living room?"

"The whole place is ours again," Steve said, pulling Jonathan's sweater up and over his head, leaving him in his t-shirt. "Might as well take advantage of it."

Jonathan rolled his eyes, but he still turned around and kissed Steve, letting Steve crowd him against the wall next to the kitchen. Double checking that Nancy wasn't back yet, Jonathan turned his mouth away from Steve's and asked him, "When should we give Nancy the presents we got her?"

"We could do that now," Steve said, grinding gently against Jonathan's hip. "If you wanted."

"Seems like you've got something in mind," Jonathan told him, pulling Steve close by the waist and kissing him again. 

"No, no. Now is good," Steve insisted, giving Jonathan one last kiss. "Where did you hide them?"

Jonathan went over and opened the coat closet next to the front door, pulling down a storage box. He took out from the box the two presents they bought for Nancy together. Then he took out the other wrapped present that he'd gotten for Steve. 

"That's an extra present," Steve said, pulling Jonathan over toward the couch. "Who's that one for?"

"I don't know," Jonathan said, watching Nancy return to the room with two wrapped presents of her own. "Maybe it's for Charlie's birthday or something."

Laughing, Steve sat down and pulled Jonathan down next to him. "Come on, you got me a present?"

"Of course I did," Jonathan said, leaning closer against Steve's side as Nancy sat down with them. Handing Steve the gift, he said, "Here, you open this one first."

"Okay." Grinning, Steve took the gift and pulled off the red wrapping paper. "A walkman? Babe…" 

Returning Steve's smile, Jonathan said, "Open the box. There's something else in there, too."

Steve did as Jonathan asked, opening the walkman box and finding two cassettes set in with the packaging. He picked up the first one and read the label, "Steve's gym mix," and laughed. The second one said, "Steve's studying mix."

"I _think_ you'll like everything that's on there," Jonathan told him.

Shaking his head, Steve said, "Thank you. Wow." He kissed Jonathan twice before admitting, "My present for you seems kind of lame now."

Chuckling, Jonathan assured him, "Don't worry about it, baby. I love you and your lame presents."

Nancy giggled, and Steve laughed too, giving Jonathan a kiss. Then, setting the walkman on the coffee table in front of them, Steve took the other two presents from Jonathan and gave them to Nancy. "These are from both of us."

"We love you," Jonathan added, hooking his chin on Steve's shoulder and watching as Nancy opened the larger of the two packages. It was a box full of fancy chocolates.

"Oh!" Nancy said, practically tearing the box open. "Thank you!" She took one of the chocolates out of the box and bit into it, groaning and rolling her eyes up with pleasure. 

"Open the other one, too," Jonathan urged her, pointing to the smaller box, still in Steve's hands.

"Okay, okay," Nancy said, popping the other half of the chocolate into her mouth and chewing as she opened the other box. It was a set of earrings, small and pink and heart-shaped to match the occasion. "Aw, these are adorable! I love them!"

She pressed a kiss to Steve's lips, and then to Jonathan's, and she tasted like chocolate.

"Okay, last, but not least," Steve said, taking the flatter of the two presents Nancy had brought in and handing it to Jonathan. "Here you go, Jonathan. My love, my darling!” Steve grabbed Jonathan’s face and peppered him with kisses.

Jonathan laughed and let Steve have his fun. After he left one final, deep kiss on Jonathan’s lips, Steve finally sat back and let him open the present. Inside were a pair of red silk boxers. “Are these for me to wear?” Jonathan asked, “Or were you planning on wearing them for me?”

“They’re for you to wear,” Steve said, sharing a glance with Nancy. “Nance and I are already wearing the other parts of this particular present.”

“You’re…” Jonathan looked at the two of them, and they appeared to be dressed fairly normally for the cold Chicago winter. “You’re wearing something special underneath?”

Nancy grinned and nodded. “You can unwrap us, after you unwrap one last present.” She shifted over so she was sitting in Steve’s lap before she gave Jonathan the last present. “Here you go, honey.”

Taking it, Jonathan said, “I know what this is, don’t I?”

“Probably,” Nancy admitted, leaning her head against Steve’s as they both watched him open the gift.

Already blushing before he tore open the paper, Jonathan found inside a box with a window showing a green dildo inside, and another box with some sort of wearable contraption to hold it. A little bit mortified, but mostly turned on, Jonathan asked, “You want to give it a try?”

Nancy nodded. “Only if you want to.”

“Yeah,” Steve said, cupping the side of Jonathan’s face. “I’m cool with going first, if you’d rather.”

“No,” Jonathan said with a little laugh, leaning against Steve’s hand. “It’s my present. _I’ll_ go first.”

Steve laughed and said, “Okay. You got it.”

Jonathan kissed Steve, and then let Nancy pull him into a kiss as well. When she got up, Jonathan tried to follow her, but she took the boxes out of his hands and asked, "Will you put those underwear on for us? Please?"

"Sure," Jonathan said, smiling as she kissed him again.

Steve put the boxers in his hands, kissing him and pushing him toward the bathroom. "We'll be in the bedroom when you're ready."

Rolling his eyes and shaking his head, Jonathan took the boxers and went to the bathroom anyway. After he changed, he felt dumb, but he figured what the hell. If it made his partners happy, it couldn’t be that bad, right?

Jonathan crossed the hallway and went into the bedroom, feeling self-conscious enough to cross his arms over his bare chest. When he got into the bedroom, he found Nancy and Steve laid out on the bed, waiting for him. Nancy was wearing something that was very red and white and sheer and lacy all at the same time. Jonathan’s fingers itched to touch her in it. Steve was wearing just a pair of red briefs that didn’t leave much to the imagination. 

Feeling like the most clothed person in the room made Jonathan feel a lot less self-conscious. Giving a little laugh, Jonathan said, “Wow. You both look…”

“Hot, right?” Steve asked with a grin.

“Sure,” Jonathan told him, meeting Nancy with a kiss when she came over. He ran his hands down her sides and over her ass, and the fabric did feel as interesting as he thought it would. That, combined with the warmth of her skin underneath and the slide of her tongue against his, and Jonathan had to take a sharp breath, his heart thundering in his chest. “Fuck,” he groaned, kissing down Nancy’s neck as she led him the rest of the way over to the bed.

When he got there, Steve was up on his knees, wrapping a hand around Jonathan’s wrist and tugging him onto the bed. “Jonathan,” he said, his voice tender and a smile on his lips. Jonathan felt so _loved_ and so _seen_ he almost felt like crying. But then Steve said, “You look good enough to eat,” and attacked Jonathan’s neck with his lips and a stupid munching sound, making Jonathan laugh loudly and try to push him away.

Steve laughed too, falling back onto the bed, pulling Jonathan with him and into a hard, wet kiss. Jonathan found himself crawling on top of Steve, straddling his hips and grinding down against his cock. The silky material of the boxers he was wearing felt _really_ nice against his dick, and he almost didn’t want to stop when Nancy said, “Hey, baby? Can I get your help with this?”

“Mm–sure,” Steve said, breaking away from kissing Jonathan and getting out from under him. 

Jonathan pouted at the loss of contact, turning over and laying on the pillows as he watched Steve help Nancy get the contraption she’d bought on correctly. Steve stood behind Nancy, pulling on the straps, cinching them up. “How’s that feel?”

“Tight, but good,” she said, closing her eyes and making a breathy sound when Steve kissed her neck and cupped one of her lace-covered breasts in his hand.

Everything about the sight made Jonathan just about lose his mind with desire. “Oh, god,” he groaned, fumbling to get the stupid silky boxers off his body. “Oh, fuck.” He shook them off his left foot as he stood up and got Nancy in his arms, kissing her deeply. 

Panting as he broke the kiss, Jonathan pressed his forehead to Nancy’s, his eyes closed as he whispered, “Please? Oh, god, _please_ , sweetheart.”

“Yeah, okay,” she said, pressing closer and kissing him again. Her cock brushed against Jonathan’s hip, and he found himself wrapping his hand around it. It wasn’t warm, like Steve’s, but it was nicely heavy and thick, with a little bit of give to it. 

Jonathan wanted it inside him so bad his knees almost buckled. “Please!”

“How do you want to do this?” Nancy asked, kissing Jonathan again.

His mind went blank. “I don’t know! I don’t–”

“Shh, shh,” Steve said, kissing Jonathan and backing him up onto the bed. “You wanna see Nancy while she’s fucking you?” he asked in a low voice.

Jonathan nodded. “Yeah.”

“C’mere,” Steve said, putting Jonathan on the edge of the bed, his back flat and his legs spread out and folded up. Steve’s hand ghosted over his cock, and Jonathan couldn’t tell if the touch made him feel relieved or further tormented. 

But then Nancy was there, kissing the inside of Jonathan’s knee, stroking a slick hand down his cock and back up again. “Look at me, sweetie.”

As soon as Jonathan met Nancy’s eyes, he felt the head of her cock at his entrance. “Oh, come on. Come on!”

“No, we’re taking this slow,” she told him, no arguments. 

Jonathan groaned, but the sound stopped short when he gasped as Nancy slipped in, just a fraction of an inch. As she pulled out and slipped back in, no further this time than the last, Steve lifted Jonathan’s head, putting his lap underneath it. He put a calming hand over Jonathan’s heart and stroked the other through his hair. 

“You’re so good, babe,” Steve said as Jonathan grabbed his hand, holding onto it as Nancy worked her way in further, stretching him and making him see stars. “So good, taking Nancy’s cock. You’re so hungry for it, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he replied, crying out when Nancy gave a bit of a longer thrust, sliding against his prostate. 

“Did I hurt you?” Nancy asked, pulling out again, leaving him too empty. 

“No, ‘s good,” he assured her, trying to pull her closer in with his foot.

She raised an eyebrow and gave Jonathan a _look_ , pushing his leg back up where she wanted it. He nodded and held it there for her, making her smile and reward him with another thrust and her hands both around his cock. They slipped up his length, one after the other as Nancy drove her cock deeper and deeper into him. 

“Ah!” Jonathan cried, sure that he was going insane with how good it felt. 

“That’s it babe,” Steve muttered. “You’re almost all the way in, aren’t you?”

“Yeah,” Nancy said, sounding a little out of breath. “But this…”

Her hands left Jonathan’s cock and he complained a little bit, but her hips kept moving and then she got her top off, throwing it to the side and getting her hands back on Jonathan. 

God, she looked so beautiful. So focused, on him, on making him feel good. She loved him so much. Jonathan couldn’t take it anymore. 

“Faster, please! Come on!” he cried out, clinging onto Steve’s hand, his legs shaking with the effort to keep them up.

Steve twisted his hand out of Jonathan’s grip, but then he hooked his hands under Jonathan’s knees and held his legs up for him and Nancy pushed into him just right and he could finally let go. 

He came, groaning low and long, clenched around Nancy’s cock, which wasn’t quite as yielding as Steve’s, but felt just as good. 

“Oh, Jesus,” Nancy muttered, running her hands up Jonathan’s chest. “Oh, fuck. Steve, baby, I need…”

“Yeah,” Steve said, giving Jonathan a kiss as he let go of his legs and then jumping out of bed to get behind Nancy. 

They pulled the dildo out of Jonathan and the harness hit the floor, and then Nancy had her hands on the bed on either side of Jonathan’s waist as Steve fucked her hard and fast. 

Jonathan felt like he needed her close, he needed her touching him so he wouldn’t float away and lose himself. He tugged at Nancy until he could hold her against his chest, hugging her and kissing her hair as Steve fucked her. 

He felt it when she came, silent but digging her nails into the bedding beside Jonathan’s shoulders. He met Steve’s eyes and nodded at him. “You’re good, baby. You can let go.”

Steve did with a loud groan, pressing in tight and breathing hard, leaning in close enough to kiss Jonathan’s lips and lick into his mouth. 

“Ah, fuck. You’re squishing me too much,” Nancy said, elbowing Steve until he laughed and pulled off of her, collapsing onto the bed next to Jonathan.

The three of them laid there, catching their breath, for a long, satisfied moment.

Then, Jonathan tugged gently on Nancy’s chin, saying, “Hey.” When she looked up at him, he told her, “I love you so much. That was amazing.”

Nancy smiled brightly. “I love you, too.” She climbed up onto him until she could hold his face in her hands and kiss him soundly. Turning to Steve, she reached over and kissed him for a long moment. “And I love you, baby.”

“Love you both,” Steve said, smiling as he reached over to kiss Jonathan. “Happy Valentine’s Day.”

Jonathan laughed and kissed Steve back. 

~*~

"Hey, thanks for helping me get caught up," Steve said to Stef as they walked across campus toward the humanities library. "I swear, last week was the craziest week I've had in a long time."

"I'm just glad everything with Jonathan's family worked out. You're sure he's okay after losing his grandmother like that?"

Steve had to force himself to remember the excuse he'd gone with for having to drop everything the week before and go into hiding. "Uh, yeah. I mean, he's a little shaken up, obviously, but he's gonna be fine."

"Oh, good."

Nudging Stef's arm, Steve asked her, "How'd it go with that guy? Shit, I forgot his name. Hot like Rob Lowe?"

"Kyle?" Stef asked, waiting for Steve's nod before she continued. "We went out to dinner and I asked him what he really thought about gay people."

"And?"

Stef rolled her eyes. "I'm not going to repeat what he said, but I ended up throwing my drink in his face and leaving."

"Hey, thanks." Steve put his arm around Stef and gave her a friendly squeeze. "I know it would've been easier to just let all that shit slide. Thanks for standing up for people like me."

Stef nodded. "Honestly, it probably saved me a lot of time in the long run. I'm fairly certain he's the kind of guy who'd expect me to give up my career as soon as we got married. And anyway…" She grinned. "One of the waiters saw what I did and thought it was hilarious. He gave me his number while I was waiting for a cab home."

With a grin, Steve said, "Look at that! Instant karma!"

Poking his side, Stef said, "I wonder what kind of karma I'll get for helping you catch up on your homework."

"It'll definitely get you free lunch for the rest of the week," Steve told her. "I'm sure of it."

Stef laughed and led the way through the library doors.

~*~

"Thanks for coming with tonight," Charlie said to Jonathan as they walked with Robin from the St. Joseph's parking structure to the alley next to the emergency room. "I need a second opinion."

"Sure," Jonathan said, following Charlie into the alley.

Like when she'd checked it the day before, the spot they'd 'ported to the previous Friday morning felt odd to Charlie. Off somehow. "Tell me I'm not crazy for thinking it feels weird right here."

Jonathan walked through the alley, wincing when he reached the spot that Charlie felt. "Okay, yeah. Weird."

"Shit," Charlie said, sighing and leaning against the alley wall. "We were too tired when we 'ported, and something got fucked up."

Stopping right at the center of the odd-feeling spot, Jonathan took the chain around his neck out from under his shirt. The ring threaded onto the chain didn't hang down as Charlie (or anyone else for that matter) would have expected it to. Instead, it floated gently upward. 

"Yeah," Jonathan said, tucking the ring back under his shirt. "Something got fucked up."

"So, how do we fix it?" Charlie asked him.

Instead of answering, Jonathan closed his eyes. A second later, he reached his hand out toward her, so Charlie put her hand in his and closed her eyes as well. Jonathan pulled her into the Inbetween, which seemed the same as always. She asked, "What are we doing in here?"

"Listen," Jonathan said, and like he was turning up the volume, Charlie suddenly heard it.

A discordant sort of noise filled her head, like making the wrong chord on a piano. The sound made the hair on the neck of her neck stand on end and her teeth _hurt_.

“Shit,” she said, reflexively covering her ears, even though it didn’t do anything, because the sound was in her mind. “How do we fix it?”

“I don’t know,” Jonathan said. “I think it _should_ sound like those power generators. Like the background sound of this universe.”

Ignoring the interdimensional implications of Jonathan’s words, Charlie tried to remember the right tone. “I think we have to shift it _down_ ,” she told Jonathan. “Like, one part of it.”

“Flatten it out,” Jonathan agreed. 

Not really sure what she was doing, Charlie _pushed_ at the sound, thinking about lowering it, lengthening it, making it match everything around it. To her surprise, it actually _worked_. 

Jonathan watched what Charlie was doing for a moment before stepping in and helping her. It didn't take too much effort, between the two of them, before the tone evened out, sounding less like random noise and more like some large creature humming. Like a giant from a fairy tale, Charlie thought. Maybe the earth itself. And wasn't that a trip?

When they were done, Charlie opened her eyes, and saw Jonathan wiping the blood from under his nose. Charlie used the wrist of her her glove (black, so none of the blood would show) to wipe her face, and smiled over at Robin. "I think we fixed it."

Jonathan took his ring out from under his shirt again and it hung down like it was supposed to. "Yep. Fixed it."

"Good to know it can be fixed, I suppose," Robin said, stepping closer and wrapping her arms around Charlie. "Does this mean we can go home now?"

"Sure," Charlie said, leading the way out of the alley. "Oh, hey," she said to Jonathan. "A studio is opening up in Robin's building next week. I got the landlord to hold it for me."

"That's great," he said, nudging Charlie's shoulder with his own. "Feel fr–" he started to say, but he cut himself off.

"What?" Robin asked him.

Shaking his head, Jonathan gave a little laugh. "I was going to say feel free to come over whenever you want to get the rest of your stuff, but you might want to at least _knock_ before coming in."

Charlie almost asked why she would need to knock at an apartment that she still had the keys to, but then she figured it out. "Gross."

"Hey, it's not me you've got to worry about," Jonathan told her. 

"Steve?" Robin asked.

"For the most part, yeah," Jonathan replied. "It's like he's forgotten how to wear clothes."

Charlie couldn't help but laugh. "Even though it's February and fucking freezing out?"

Jonathan nodded, but then he stopped short and turned around.

"What?" Charlie asked, trying to figure out what made him stop. She didn't feel anything. "What is it?"

"It's a…" Jonathan said, but he didn't finish the thought before crouching down next to a sewer drain in the curb. He looked up, around at the other people walking down the street, and made a face. "I think it's one of the baby monsters. I can get it, I just…" He looked around again. "There's so many people around."

"On it," Robin said, walking quickly toward the end of the block. She climbed up onto a newspaper dispenser and stood on it. Taking her badge out of her pocket, she called out in a loud voice, "Attention! Can I have everyone's attention? I'm Agent Buckley with the FBI. Has anyone seen a man wearing a red hat? Anyone! What about you, ma'am?"

While Robin continued to shout at everyone, Charlie crouched down next to Jonathan. "I think I can feel it down there, too. You wanna pull it up here?"

"Yeah," Jonathan said, taking Charlie's hand when she offered it. 

They _pulled_ on the cold-wrong-feeling little bastard, and it came up through the sewer grating, squealing and squirming. Feeling Jonathan's intention, Charlie gave him a nod, and they ripped the little slug in half. It stopped squirming and the wrong feeling of it vanished. 

"What should we do with the pieces?" Charlie asked Jonathan, aware that Robin's distraction wasn't going to last much longer. "It's not like an earthworm, right? It can't regrow the rest of its body from just a half, can it?"

"I have no idea," Jonathan said, but he dropped both halves of the slug-type thing back down the sewer. "Hopefully that does the trick."

"How many more do you think there are?" 

"I don't know," he said with a shrug, standing up and giving Robin a little wave. 

She thanked the people around her on the street and jumped down, meeting Charlie and Jonathan as they walked toward her. 

Jonathan continued, "It could be a bunch more. We don't know that we found and destroyed the only nest. The list of people missing from this city – the one that Murray is trying to match to the other bodies we found – is a lot longer than three."

"Chambers said the government had, like _five_ more adults," Charlie pointed out, squeezing Robin's hand briefly as they reunited, before letting her go again. "Not to mention the ones the Russians might have. What happens if another one escapes in some other city?"

"Then I guess," Jonathan said with a sigh, "we get to be the people tracking it down."

"Maybe…" Charlie said, looking over at Robin. "Maybe I could spend some time looking for the rest of those little buggers. Maybe we _both_ could."

"You and me?" Robin asked. "I can't _sense_ them or whatever. Not like you can."

Pointing back toward the street corner where Robin had put on her little performance, Charlie said, "You've got other valuable skills, Rob. Plus, you could probably help me bill that Owens guy for the hours we put in. Make an actual job of it."

Robin laughed and nodded. "Yeah, I suppose I could make that happen."

"Let me know if you need any help," Jonathan said, practically radiating _pride_ at her. "They don't stay that little and easily-squishable forever."

"Oh, I will," Charlie assured him. "No need to worry about that."

~*~

It was a Thursday night and Nancy was finally all caught up with her work for class and for the paper, when there was a knock on the door. Nancy figured it was probably one of the neighbors, maybe coming to complain about Jonathan's music, even though it wasn't loud _at all_ , so she said, "Honey, can you get that?"

Jonathan didn't go answer the door. He didn't even look up from the homework he was doing on the other side of the kitchen table. Instead, he told her, "It's just Charlie."

Nancy looked up from the device they had taken from Marshal Chambers, which she had mostly disassembled across her half of the table. When the door opened, it was Charlie who came through it. She closed the door behind her as she said, "Hey," in greeting.

"Hey," Nancy replied, smiling and standing up to go greet her. She hugged Charlie, saying, "It feels like forever since I've seen you!"

"I saw you on Saturday," Charlie told her, rolling her eyes, but accepting the hug Nancy gave her. "And I'll see you all weekend when we go down to Springfield."

"Yeah, I know," Nancy said, following Charlie down the hallway to her room. "I just...got used to you being here all the time, I guess."

Charlie stopped short at the still-broken door. 

Pointing to it, Nancy said, "Hopper's gonna bring some tools when we come back on Sunday. He's going to help Steve and Jonathan fix it."

"Can't take this one to the super, huh?" Charlie asked, sighing before she crossed the threshold into the room. 

"No, not exactly," Nancy said, standing in the doorway. "Did you want some privacy, or…"

Shaking her head vehemently, Charlie waved Nancy into the room with her. "I just wanted to pack for this weekend, grab some more clean clothes." She picked up one of the cassettes lying on her desk. "Get my music."

"Jonathan said you've found someplace to move into. In Robin's building?"

Charlie went to the closet and pulled down an army-surplus duffle bag, saying, "Yeah. It's almost twice as much as I was paying here with you guys, but I've got some money saved up. It'll be good." She paused halfway to her dresser. "You guys are going to be okay, right? Like, you can make up the difference in the rent?"

With a chuckle, Nancy assured her, "Yeah. We'll be fine. Especially if Owens holds up his end of the bargain and pays Jonathan for whatever time he's going to spend working for them."

Nancy sighed and sat down on Charlie's bed, watching her pack her things. Then she remembered the conversation she'd had with Robin a few weeks prior. 

"Hey, I actually wanted to talk to you about something," Nancy said.

Charlie sorted through the things in her top dresser drawer, asking, "What?"

"Just," Nancy tried to find the right words and had some trouble with it. "I just…"

Turning around, Charlie gave Nancy a confused sort of look. "What is it?"

"I wanted you to know," Nancy said, taking a deep breath and letting it out, closing her eyes. "I'm bisexual, too. Like the guys. Like you."

"Oh," Charlie said, sitting down on her desk chair, clutching a couple of shirts in her hands. "Okay. What does that mean for you and Jonathan and Steve? Are you gonna start dating–"

"Nothing's changing," Nancy insisted, feeling her face get hot and red. "It's the three of us, and that's it. Forever."

Now Charlie looked even more confused. "Then… why are you telling me?"

"Because," Nancy told her. "I just wanted you to know that, I don't know, that you're not _alone_ in being this way."

Charlie nodded and looked down, but Nancy could see a small smile tugging at the corner of her mouth. "Okay, sure. Thanks."

Nancy nodded, rubbing at her red-feeling cheeks. "You're welcome."

"I should finish packing," Charlie said. "Robin's expecting me back in time for _Cheers_." She scoffed, which made Nancy laugh. "Yeah, I don't get why she needs _me_ to watch it with her."

“That’s just being in a relationship.” Nancy shrugged. “Spending time together is important.”

“Yeah, I know,” Charlie said softly. 

Gently, Nancy asked, “How’s it going? Staying at Robin’s place with her?”

Charlie made a face and said, “Better than expected.”

Nancy couldn’t help but laugh. “What were you expecting? You’d get sick of each other?”

“More like she’d get sick of me,” Charlie muttered, pulling a few pairs of pants out of her dresser. 

“Hey,” Nancy said, standing up and going to Charlie, wrapping her arms around her. “You’re actually not all that difficult to be around, you know. People actually _do_ like you. It’s okay to let them.”

Charlie made a frustrated, whining sort of noise and stomped her foot, which made Nancy laugh again. 

“What are you, three?”

Charlie laughed, too, before leaning her head against Nancy’s. “I’m trying to get used to it. It’s just...taking a while.”

“You’ll get there,” Nancy assured her, giving Charlie one final squeeze. “I’ll let you finish packing. After all, you’ve got that episode of _Cheers_ you don’t want to miss.”

Charlie laughed, “Yeah, yeah.”

Nancy went back out to the main room of the apartment, finding Jonathan right where she left him. Standing next to his chair, she pushed her fingers through his hair and asked, “How’s it going?”

“Almost done,” he told her, eyes still on the paper he was writing, but angling his face so she could kiss his cheek, which she did, of course.

**Author's Note:**

> And that's it for this story! Please let me know what you thought in the comments below!
> 
> Posting for the next work in the series, "Kindred", will begin on Monday, with new chapters going up every day next week. I hope you'll check it out!
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](https://pterawaters.tumblr.com/) and on [pillowfort](https://www.pillowfort.social/pterawaters). Feel free to message me over there if you want to chat! If you'd like to recommend this work, please consider reblogging [this tumblr post](https://pterawaters.tumblr.com/post/190897686099/read-underground-on-ao3-as-valentines-day). Thanks!
> 
> If you'd like to subscribe to the series but don't have an AO3 account, let me know. I've got a bunch of invitations ready to be used.


End file.
